Buy tinned beans, guns and a lifestyle block – Mark Steyn’s new book
warns Obama is presiding over the collapse of America, and no corner
of New Zealand will be safe when the West goes to hell in a handcart

Outspoken MP:

Consign Treaty to History
‘Disband the Waitangi Tribunal,
hang the Treaty up in a museum’

Scare Con

Why NZ’s decision to ditch the
Kyoto Protocol was the only
sensible option

One Ring
To Rule
Them

Helen Clark
channels Sauron
in UNDP global
governance speech

Dec 2012/Jan 2013, $8.60

CURRENT AFFAIRS, TOYS, CARS, FRANKLY-EXPRESSED OPINIONS & MORE

Fancy Thai
tonight?
Our one-stop connection
will have you in Phuket
same day.

Mark Steyn’s devastating
new book suggests America
is passing the point of no
return on its journey to
rapid civilisational collapse,
and he warns even New
Zealand will not be a safe
bolt-hole when it happens.
IAN WISHART reports

20

SCARE CON

They keep telling us
climate change is getting
‘worse than ever’, but the
evidence keeps on saying
otherwise

26

UNHOLY WAR

Read the real roots of the
Israel/Palestine conflict, in
this backgrounder from the
last uprising a decade ago

IN HERS
GARDASIL SHOCK

20

New studies suggest the
cervical cancer vaccine
might not even work, and
the company behind it has
faced criminal fines in the
US. IAN WISHART has this
developing story

departments

contents

OPINION
EDITOR

4

COMMUNIQUES

6

EYES RIGHT

8

STEYNPOST

10

Speaks for itself, really
Your say

Richard Prosser
Mark Steyn

ACTION
INVEST

Peter Hensley on money

SCIENCE

How to beat jet lag

MUSIC

Julie Andrews new role

30
38
40

MOVIES

James Bond & Lincoln,
both four stars

44

GADGETS

44

The latest toys
The Mall
Big screen smartphones
Cyberwar

36

MINDFUEL
BOOKCASE

42

CONSIDER THIS

46

THE QUESTION

48

Michael Morrisseyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s
summer reads
Amy Brooke

48

32

32
33
34
36

William Dembski

50%

Lower printing
cost vs
coLour Laser*

65773

Editor

Crying over spilt milk
The news this month that China was rejecting shipments of NZ made infant
formula for failing quality checks should be a serious warning to cheerleaders of
absolutely unregulated business with Beijing.
There are many in New Zealand
politics, and also the news media, who
see free trade with China as highly
beneficial, and particularly in the area
of Chinese investment in New Zealand
infrastructure like the dairy industry.
They forget, however, that China is
more than capable of destroying New
Zealand’s reputation in a heartbeat if
given the opportunity. Case in point:
milk formula.
New Zealand is recognised as having
the best dairy brand in the world. We
have worked hard to achieve that, our
quality control has been light years
ahead of China’s. The melamine scandal of 2008 is a perfect example of what
happens when you do business with a
culture where cutting corners and corruption is more widespread than here.
However, by allowing Chinese
businesses to set up in New Zealand,
purchase strategic assets and then
export under the aegis of “Brand New
Zealand”, we may as well be hacking
our feet off with a blunt pocketknife.

We have no real control, at this stage,
on the quality of Chinese exports from
New Zealand. That doesn’t matter if
its TV sets or clothing, where we don’t
have a world leading reputation, but it
matters hugely when it comes to our
strategic brands like dairy.
In October, 26 tonnes of Chinese
branded NZ milk formula was prevented from entering China on the
grounds of low iodine content. That
news was reported in the Asian press.
Media reports suggest the blame may
partly lie in different testing standards
between New Zealand and Chinese
government agencies, but one would
have to ask why: with so much at risk,
New Zealand can’t afford to let these
issues fall between the cracks.
Another Chinese baby formula company operating in New Zealand has been
found using a false address and company
details here, while in China itself around
twenty infant formula companies have
in turn been falsely marketing Chinese
milk powder as “New Zealand made”.

However, by allowing Chinese businesses to
set up in New Zealand, purchase strategic
assets and then export under the aegis of
“Brand New Zealand”, we may as well be
hacking our feet off with a blunt pocketknife
4 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

At the moment, regulatory agencies
in New Zealand appear to be treating
these sorts of issues as a minor inconvenience – just another cost of doing
business with China. They are not, of
course. If we have no quality control
over what Chinese companies who
invest in this country are really doing
here, and no supervision to prevent
them cutting quality corners, we could
wake up one morning to another fatal
melamine-type scandal where dozens
of Chinese babies are dead, and a New
Zealand-branded and manufactured
product is the culprit. Where then our
hard-won reputation for quality?
The Dairy Board model, transferred
to Fonterra which replaced it, was a
good one. With the dairy farmers all
shareholders of Fonterra, they all had
a common interest in not cutting corners. Fonterra, of course, has its own
quality control procedures to back that
up. Chinese conglomerates trading off
our brand have no such vested interest.
The problems emerging from Chinese
involvement in our dairy trade once
again throw issues of foreign ownership
of strategic assets into sharp relief.

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Dear Mr Government
Please help … I am raising children …
I try to teach them not to live in
drunkenness, to be of sober mind …
you lower the drinking age
I try to teach them to work hard and
not to be indebted to anyone … you
offer them student loans
I try to teach them to respect life for it
is a precious gift … you legalise abortion
I try to teach them that chastity is a
gift to be treasured and given to that
someone ‘special’ … you tell them in
school that its OK to have sex as long
as they take precautions.
I try to teach them they are valuable
as women … you make prostitution legal
I try to teach them to eat healthily …
you bring in the Food Bill and make it
more difficult and costly to buy foods
that are not doused in poisonous
sprays, then you allow cheap foods filled
with chemicals and dangerous additives to fill our supermarkets
I try to teach them that they should
study hard and get top marks … you
change the NZQA system so they
need not bother
I try to teach them that they have
an awesome Creator, Who watches
lovingly over them every moment of
their lives … you say God must not be
mentioned in schools
I try to teach them that family is
important and that Mothers have a
valuable and crucial role in the lives of
their children … you give them incentives to go out to work and place their
children in day-care
I try to teach them that their choices
have consequences … you make it illegal to discipline them with smacking
and you make punishments for crime
pathetically light
Please Mr Government … what do
you want me to teach them? You are
placed in a position of great trust and
power … please do not abuse it.

Vitamin D
COVER: NEWSCOM/MAXPPP

After hearing Ian speaking with Leigh-

6 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

ton Smith I got so alarmed realising
that after the dreadful weather we had
I was probably depleted of Vitamin D.
I immediately went and had a blood
test that revealed I have 12 nmol/L. (It
should be about 100). I the bought the
book and skimmed through it trying
to work out the best way to escalate my
levels as quick as possible.
I do know from the book that taking
supplements and eating specific foods
is not a hugely efficient way of getting
adequate doses of Vitamin D.
What I should be doing immediately
before summer and higher sunshine
hours make it easier to do what you
advocate in the book?
Jenni P, via email

Wishart responds: At these levels,
you need an immediate prescription
from your doctor. They will find out
whether there is an underlying medical cause of your low levels, and how
best to treat it.

Poetry
Remembering
They’re lovely at this age,
aren’t they…? he said:
later on they don›t want to know you.
And in his worn face I read
as he half-turned, a smile, a page
of the past with the hurt not gone.
Two tiny girls smiled goodbye, long
climbing the steps of the plane.
And I thought how very sad, when true.
One more visit… will many still remain
as he, like we, waved goodbye to you
each on our life›s short journey?
Once in a while, yearning
his mind returns to where a little one
pulled a young Dad, tugging at his hand
anxious to show, knowing he›d understand
the drawings so carefully done,
such earnest mazes of criss-crossed
lines, their meaning long well lost
over half a century ago…
But now? They don›t want to know
you, he’d said, chin lifted, gallantly
I thought, life unfair to so
many whom memory will not let go.
Whatever they did, forgive them. Oh do, do
at least this Christmas…remembering remembering that they loved you.
Jenifer Foster

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 7

Richard Prosser

Corridors of Paua
My first year as a Member of Parliament is drawing to a close. Almost 12 months ago,
on the evening of my daughter’s second birthday, You the People recalled Winston
Peters from the wilderness of political penance, and sent him back to the Halls of
Power along with Yours Truly and six other fine patriots.
It has been an eye-opening orbit
around the sun, I don’t mind reporting. People ask me if it was what I was
expecting; in truth I didn’t really know
what to expect, other than what I had
observed from the outside, and the one
thing which is certain is that it’s been
nothing like that.
Every new job is a bit of a learning
curve, and this one is no different in
that regard, except that for the newbies of the NZ First caucus, hitting
the ground running was probably a
slightly bigger undertaking than that
demanded of our fellow first-timers
from the other Parties.
We had no institutional memory
of the 49th Parliament, and no background on the many Bills which we
were required to form policy positions
and begin speaking on, most of them
already at second and third reading.
But you can’t keep a good team
down, and now that we’ve settled in,

learned the ropes, found where the
dunnies are, and got a handle on the
practices, procedures, and protocols of
the Parliament – as well as the policies of the Government – there’ll be no
stopping us.
And some of those policies are
disturbing at best, and becoming more
so. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not
dismissing the National Party’s agenda
out of hand in its entirety. We oppose
asset sales, we oppose school closures
and amalgamations, we oppose throwing genuine welfare cases on the scrap
heap without there being real jobs for
them to go to and decent houses for
them to live in. But there is plenty that
we do agree with the Nats on, just as
there is plenty we agree with Labour
about, and in a couple of years’ time it’s
highly likely that we will be working
with one or the other of them, in some
shape or another, to form the next
Government.

It is time that the Gravy Train was derailed,
the Waitangi Tribunal disbanded, the Treaty
removed from legislation and hung up in a
museum; time for us all to go forward as one
nation. Nothing else is sustainable
8 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

But one thing we cannot, do not, and
will not support this Government in, is
its relentless march towards Māori separatism. For reasons this writer simply
cannot fathom, National appears hellbent on splitting this country down the
middle, creating apartheid where once
there was harmony, and entrenching
for generations to come a mentality of
antagonism and division which carves
New Zealand up along racial lines,
with privilege based on ethnicity, and
massive handouts of public wealth to
an elite few possessed of an ever-dwindling percentage of Māori blood.
Whānau Ora was born of a desire to
build a separate Māori welfare system,
funded primarily by middle class white
taxpayers, but available only to poor
or unemployed working-class brown
people. As I sit and type, an unwanted
and unwarranted Constitutional
Review proceeds behind closed doors,
convened of separatist part-Māori and
their sickly-white-liberal apologists,
which is unashamedly driven by a
desire to author a Constitution based
on the Treaty of Waitangi, and then
impose it uncontested upon an unwitting and unconsulted country which
never asked for it and which doesn’t
want any such thing.
And through it all, the Gravy Train
rolls on; fuelled by bitterness and
resentment, piloted by greed and cyni-

cism, plunging headlong down a track
towards national oblivion and leaving a
trail of re-written history in its wake.
Hard on the heels of the long-expected
(if little accepted) top-up payments to
both Ngāi Tahu and Tainui, giving those
two iwi cash payments of $68.5 million
and $70 million respectively in order
to keep their Treaty settlements “fair”,
comes the news that in five years’ time,
they will be entitled to yet another topup! The concept of ‘full and final’ settlements is nothing but a mirage, it would
seem. We are destined to crawl ever
nearer to this mythical oasis, shimmering tantalizingly close in the distance,
but never managing to actually reach it.
The first two settlements are guaranteed
a value, reaching ever onwards into the
future, of 16.1% and 17% of whatever the
total might eventually prove to be, if
indeed any eventuality is ever allowed to
be arrived at.
Settlement, it would appear, has
little to do with what may or may not
have been lost or taken, with what that
might have been worth, with what
value, recompense and reconciliation
has been agreed upon; no, it all comes
down to “he’s got more than me, I want
some more as well!”
The paradoxical irony of Ngāi Tahu
and Tainui receiving additional compensation based on whatever other iwi
are awarded by way of Waitangi settlements, is that both those tribes negotiated their original payouts entirely
outside the framework of the Waitangi
Tribunal; Tainui because there was
never one unified Tainui Nation which
signed the Treaty either individually
or as a whole, and Ngāi Tahu because,
as I have discussed before, the Treaty
never applied to the South Island. The
Mainland and Stewart Island were
both annexed to the Colony of New
South Wales by declaration, on the
basis of Cook’s claim of possession and
the precept of terra nullis.
Well I say enough. This madness
has to stop. We cannot, we will not, go
forward as a nation while this weeping
sore is allowed to continue to fester.
Ordinary middle New Zealand,
white and brown alike, have had about
a gutsful of the separatist agenda of
this and previous Governments, and
that of their cynical and greedy co-

conspirators within the professional
grievance industry. Ordinary brown
and white middle New Zealanders have
just about come to the end of their rope
where the racist elitists of the Gravy
Train are concerned; the academics,
the sycophants, the half-caste and
part-caste and 1/64th part “Māori” who
claim colonial oppression is to blame
for them smoking dope and beating
their children to death, while standing
with their hands out for never-ending
compensation for wrongs never suffered, from those who never committed any wrongs.
Ordinary Māori want warm dry
homes and secure decent-paying jobs
and good schools and health care for
their kids, same as everyone else wants.
They don’t particularly care about
compensation for the re-naming of
some mountain or another which may
or may not have been sacred to some
of their ancestors, who may or may
not have owned it for very long before
it was taken by force by the tribe next
door. They certainly don’t care about
compensation when they themselves
never get to see a cent of it, when the
millions handed over by the Crown are
spirited away and locked up by a tiny
“tribal” elite whose share of the ances-

tors’ DNA is almost always even less
than that of the modern day descendants whom they claim to represent.
Neither ordinary Māori nor ordinary white people want a New Zealand
where there are two systems, two sets
of laws, two standards of citizenship.
No-one wants a racially separate,
segregated New Zealand. Almost two
centuries of intermarriage have made
us one people whether the bitter and
twisted racists of the Gravy Train
like it or not, and it is high time the
National Party leadership got that
message through its individual and
collective heads.
Pandering to a tiny elite in the way
that they are, partly to satiate the racist
Māori Party on whose votes they rely,
and alienating the bulk of middle New
Zealand in the process, is no way to
ensure political stability; and it is no
way to pave the road to the future for
our children and grandchildren either.
It is time that the Gravy Train was
derailed, the Waitangi Tribunal disbanded, the Treaty removed from legislation and hung up in a museum; time
for us all to go forward as one nation.
Nothing else is sustainable.
Richard Prosser

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 9

Mark Steyn

The beginning of the end
of America
Amid the ruin and rubble of the gray morning after, it may seem in poor taste to do
anything so vulgar as plug the new and stunningly topical paperback edition of my book,
After America – or, as Dennis Miller retitled it on the radio the other day, “Wednesday.”
But the business of America is business, as Calvin Coolidge said long
ago in an alternative universe, and I
certainly could use a little. So I’m going
to be vulgar and plug away.
The central question of “Wednesday”
– I mean, After America – is whether
the Brokest Nation In History is capable of meaningful course correction.
On Election Tuesday, the American
people answered that question. The rest
of the world will make its dispositions
accordingly.
In the weeks ahead, Democrats and
Republicans will reach a triumphant
“bipartisan” deal to avert the fiscal
cliff through some artful bookkeeping
mechanism that postpones Taxmageddon for another year, or six months, or
three, when they can reach yet another
triumphant deal to postpone it yet again.
Harry Reid has already announced
that he wants to raise the debt ceiling
– or, more accurately, lower the debt
abyss – by $2.4 trillion before the end
of the year, and no doubt we can look
forward to a spectacular “bipartisan”
agreement on that, too.

It took the government of the United
States two centuries to rack up its first
trillion dollars in debt. Now Washington piles on another trillion every nine
months. Forward!
If you add up the total debt – state,
local, the works – every man, woman
and child in this country owes 200
grand (which is rather more than the
average Greek does). Every American
family owes about three-quarters of
a million bucks, or about the budget
deficit of Lichtenstein, which has the
highest GDP per capita in the world.
Which means that HRH Prince
Hans-Adam II can afford it rather
more easily than Bud and Cindy at 27b
Elm Street. In 2009, the Democrats
became the first government in the history of the planet to establish annual
trillion-dollar deficits as a permanent
feature of life.
Before the end of Obama’s second
term, the federal debt alone will hit
$20 trillion. That ought to have been
the central fact of this election – that
Americans are the brokest brokeybroke losers who ever lived, and it’s

According to one CBO analysis, U.S.
government spending is sustainable as long
as the rest of the world is prepared to sink
19% of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt
10 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

time to do something about it.
My Hillsdale College comrade Paul
Rahe, while accepting much of my thesis, thought that, as an effete milquetoast pantywaist sissified foreigner, I
had missed a vital distinction.
As he saw it, you can take the boy
out of Canada, but you can’t take the
Canada out of the boy. I had failed to
appreciate that Americans were not
Euro-Canadians, and would not go
gently into the statist night. But, as I
note in my book, “a determined state
can change the character of a people in
the space of a generation or two.”
The election results demonstrate
that, as a whole, the American electorate is trending very Euro-Canadian.
True, you still have butch T-shirts –
“Don’t Tread On Me,” “These Colors
Don’t Run.” In my own state, where the
Democrats ran the board on election
night, the “Live Free Or Die” license
plates look very nice when you see
them all lined up in the parking lot of
the Social Security office.
But in their view of the state and its
largesse, there’s nothing very exceptional about Americans, except that
they’re the last to get with the program.
Barack Obama ran well to the left of
Bill Clinton and John Kerry, and has
been rewarded for it both by his party’s
victory and by the reflex urgings of the
usual GOP experts that the Republican
Party needs to “moderate” its brand.
I have no interest in the traditional

straw-clutching: Oh, it was the weak
candidate ... hard to knock off an
incumbent ... next time we’ll have a
better GOTV operation in Colorado.
I’m always struck, if one chances to
be with a GOP insider when a new poll
rolls off the wire, that their first reaction is to query whether it’s of “likely”
voters or merely “registered” voters. As
the consultant class knows, registered
voters skew more Democrat than likely
voters, and polls of “all adults” skew
more Democrat still.
Hence the preoccupation with turnout models. In other words, if America
had compulsory voting as Australia
does, the Republicans would lose every
time. In Oz, there’s no turnout model,
because everyone turns out.
The turnout-model obsession is an
implicit acknowledgment of an awkward truth – that, outside the voting
booth, the default setting of American
society is ever more liberal and statist.
The short version of electoral cycles
is as follows: the low-turnout midterms
are fought in political terms, and thus
Republicans do well and sometimes
spectacularly well (1994, 2010); the
higher-turnout presidential elections
are fought in broader cultural terms,
and Republicans do poorly, because
they’ve ceded most of the cultural
space to the other side.
What’s more likely to determine
the course of your nation’s destiny? A
narrow focus on robocalls in selected
Florida and New Hampshire counties every other fall? Or determining
how all the great questions are framed
from the classroom to the iPod to the
movie screen in the 729 days between
elections?
The good news is that reality (to
use a quaint expression) doesn’t need
to swing a couple of thousand soccer
moms in northern Virginia. Reality doesn’t need to crack 270 in the
Electoral College. Reality can get 1.3%
of the popular vote and still trump
everything else.
In the course of his first term,
Obama increased the federal debt by
just shy of $6 trillion and in return
grew the economy by $905 billion. So,
as Lance Roberts at Street Talk Live
pointed out, in order to generate every
dollar of economic growth the United

U.S. Treasury Secretary
TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER/
Jay Mallin/ZUMAPRESS.com

States had to borrow about five dollars
and sixty cents.
There’s no one out there on the planet
– whether it’s “the rich” or the Chinese
– who can afford to carry on bankrolling that rate of return. According to
one CBO analysis, U.S. government
spending is sustainable as long as the
rest of the world is prepared to sink 19%
of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt.
We already know the answer to that:
In order to avoid the public humiliation of a failed bond auction, the U.S.
Treasury sells 70% of the debt it issues
to the Federal Reserve – which is to say
the left hand of the U.S. government is
borrowing money from the right hand
of the U.S. government.
It’s government as a Nigerian email
scam, with Ben Bernanke playing the
role of the dictator’s widow with $4
trillion under her bed that she’s willing

Soon after 9/11, Investigate columnist Mark Steyn noted
that the West is “sleepwalking to national suicide”.
Eleven years on, the edge of the precipice has become
clearly visible to those still left with the capacity to read
the signs. For everyone else, however, it’s as if they
are dancing on the deck of the Titanic, oblivious to
the iceberg looming in the darkness. IAN WISHART
analyses some of Steyn’s arguments in his latest book,
After America: Get Ready For Armageddon

“ E

ven the obscurest sheep farming hamlet in New Zealand is not
going to be that secure in the world that’s coming.”
That’s a quote from Mark Steyn, not from his book but from a
recent Canadian TV interview. Is there, asked the host, any way of
escaping the rapidly approaching fall of Western civilisation, is it
time for us all to book one way tickets to places like New Zealand?
Steyn observed that it’s a question he gets asked all the time now: is New Zealand going to be the scene of the last sunset over the West, the final refuge of the
civilised world? Is Godzone far enough away to emerge relatively unscathed from
the coming storm?
Evidently, Steyn thinks not. And if you examine his arguments in After
America, it is easy to see why: the story he tells about the United States is also the
story of the collapse of New Zealand society. If anything, NZ is the canary in the
mineshaft already choking on the fumes.
Steyn’s argument in the book is a fundamentally simple one and to an extent
it echoes what I wrote in my 2007 book Eve’s Bite: socialism has managed to
become so ingrained in western political and education systems that citizens no
longer recognise it, and it is killing our civilisation. Rapidly. It has used populist
policies and ideals to conceal its agenda. If ordinary people are no longer educated to detect socialism or understand its dangers, freedom will inexorably be
eroded without protest.
Even worse, much of the high school curriculum and certainly much of the
tertiary education system has adopted socialist ideals as a worthwhile goal: world
peace, a global economy, equality for all, free education, free healthcare, cradle to
the grave social welfare. The list goes on and, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t aspire
to such lofty ideals?
New Zealanders, who’ve enjoyed a taxpayer funded health system for decades,
looked on with bemusement at the debate that ripped America apart over free
healthcare recently. Commentators here simply could not believe that Americans
could think government-funded healthcare was wrong. Steyn, however, shows
Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 13

that New Zealanders missed the point:
“Government health care is not about
health care, it’s about government.
That’s why the Democrats spent the first
year of a brutal recession trying to ram
Obamacare down the throats of a nation
that didn’t want it. Because the governmentalisation of health care is the fastest
way to a permanent left of centre political culture. It redefines the relationship
between the citizen and the state in
fundamental ways that make small government all but impossible ever again.
In most of the rest of the western world,
it’s led to a kind of two party one-party
state: right of centre parties will once in
a while be in office, but never in power,
merely presiding over vast left wing
bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.
All such ‘technocratic’ societies slide left,
into statism and stasis.”

L

ook at New Zealand politics for
a moment. Isn’t Steyn’s criticism
a bullseye observation on New
Zealand? We have become so used to
taxpayer funded healthcare that we
don’t realise how it has been used to
dominate our lives. Once you allow a
government to regulate your health,
you are allowing them to regulate your
life. If taxpayers are picking up the bill,
the taxpayers’ elected representatives
assume they have the right to legislate
to change your behaviour, to dictate
what food you eat, which drink you are
allowed and so on.
The argument, that healthcare is
expensive and that’s why taxpayers
should fund it, is rejected by Steyn:
“Health is potentially a big-ticket
item, but so’s a house and a car, and
most folks manage to handle those
without a Government Accommodation Plan or a Government Motor
Vehicles System – or, at any rate, they
did in pre-bailout America.”

In New Zealand of course, our State
has already grown to include free housing as well for those deemed to be “in
need”, with the result that some spend
four or five decades living in cheap
taxpayer subsidised accommodation.
Mark Steyn observes that America
is being split into two groups – the
“Conformicrats” and the “Flownovers”.
The former, he says, are those either
employed by or consulting to the State,
or the recipients of welfare benefits or
government handouts of some description. The latter are the taxpayers – the
genuine working families whose
efforts pay the bills but who rarely see
the benefits. They are the people who
politicians fly over in their trips to and
from their photo opportunities.
“In one America,” writes Steyn,
“those who subscribe to the ruling
ideology can access a world of tenured
security lubricated by government
and without creating a dime of wealth
for the overall economy. In the other
America, millions of people go to
work every day to try to support their
families and build up businesses and
improve themselves, and the harder
they work the more they’re penalised
to support the government class in its
privileges.”
Sound familiar?
“Increasingly, America’s divide is
about the nature of the state itself about the American idea,” continues
Steyn.
“The Flownover Country’s champion
ought, in theory, to be the Republican
Party. But, even in less fractious times,
this is a loveless marriage. Much of the
GOP establishment is either seduced by
the Conformicrats or terrified by them,
to the point where they insist on allowing the liberals to set the parameters of
the debate – on health care, immigration, education, Social Security – and

then wonder why elections are always
fought on the Democrats’ terms. If you
let the left make the rules, the right
winds up being represented by the likes
of Bob Dole and John McCain, decent
old sticks who know how to give dignified concession speeches.
“If you want to get rave reviews for
losing gracefully, that’s the way to go.
If you want to prevent Big Government driving America off a cliff, it’s
insufficient.
“The Conformicrats need Flownover
Country to fund them. It’s less clear
why Flownover Country needs the
Conformicrats – and a house divided
against itself cannot stand without
the guy who keeps up the mortgage
payments.”
Across the West, the growth of government has been met with a similar
growth in state handouts – what the
Left often refers to as “redistribution of
wealth”. In 2009, a staggering 47 percent of US households paid no income
tax, and 40% of Britons received state
handouts of some description.
“If you pay nothing for Government,
why would you want less of it?” Steyn
asks.
In New Zealand terms, it is even
more dramatic. Of the 500,000 families
with children in New Zealand, 378,000
of them are receiving government
benefits in the form of the Working For
Families package. On top of that are
households where the main breadwinner is either unemployed or on the
Domestic Purposes Benefit. There are
321,000 households (including single
people) receiving unemployment, sickness or DPB benefits, so it is clear that
a large chunk of New Zealand is now
dependent on the State for money in
some way.
Those figures represent a large chunk
of voters who can be guaranteed to

In New Zealand of course, our State has already
grown to include free housing as well for those
deemed to be “in need”, with the result that
some spend four or five decades living in cheap
taxpayer subsidised accommodation
14 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

vote for the political party least likely
to remove their “entitlements”, which
in turn heavily favours either left wing
parties, or right-wing parties prepared to tolerate the continuation of
“entitlements”.
The problem for New Zealand and
the wider West is that the funding for
the entitlements can only come from
taxes or offshore borrowing.
“Every dollar in Obama’s ‘stash’
comes from me, you, or the Chinese
Politburo,” notes Mark Steyn. “If you
fall into the taxation category and
you’re stuck with the tab for Obama’s
stash, you’re not only paying for groups
that get a better hearing in Washington, but ensuring that the socioeconomic conditions of the republic will
trend, mercilessly, against you.
“The small business class – men and
women in unglamorous lines of work
that keep the Flownover Country going
– are disfavoured by the Conformicrats. They are occasionally acknowledged by our rulers with rhetorical
flourishes – ‘tax cuts for working
families’ – but on closer inspection
these ‘tax cuts’ invariably mean not
reductions in the rate of income seizure but a ‘tax credit’ reimbursed from
the seizure in return for you living
your life the way the government wants
you to, and expanding the size of the
dependent class.
“The short history of the post-war
western democracies is that you don’t
need a president-for-life if you’ve got a
bureaucracy-for-life…thus, America in
the twenty-first century – a supposedly
centre-right nation governed by a leftof-centre political class, a lefter-of-centre judiciary, a leftist-of-centre bureaucracy, all of whom have been educated
by a lefterooniest-of-all academy.”
Once again, it’s depressingly too
easy to draw comparisons between the
socialisation of America and what has
already happened in New Zealand.
American national debt now stands
at US$200,000 per person…or a million US dollars for a family of five.
As Steyn puts it, “there isn’t enough
money on the planet to bail out the
US.” New Zealand’s total overseas
debt, including private borrowing as
well as Government borrowing, is in
the region of $264 billion, meaning

every man, woman and child in New
Zealand would have to find NZ$66,000
each to pay back New Zealand’s total
indebtedness, or $330,000 for a family
of five. There goes the mortgage.

W

hen foreign investors start
calling in their loans as
the world economy collapses, they’ll put pressure on NZ
banks who will in turn put pressure
on you, their customers. In the event
that a New Zealand bank begins to
test its financial viability limits, the
Reserve Bank has this month approved
its new OBR – open bank resolution
scheme – which will see customers’
savings accounts raided without warning overnight with “haircuts” – a
quaint word that means if you
have $10,000 in your savings or
cheque account on a Thursday
night, you might wake up on
Friday morning and find only
$5,000 left, with no hope of
getting your money back. It
will have been taken by ANZ/
BNZ/Westpac/Kiwibank or
whoever (with Government
approval) to pay off the
bank’s debts, on the basis
that bank customers should
bear some responsibility
for bank losses. Woe betide
you if you happen to be the
unfortunate sap who has
just sold your house and
the proceeds are sitting in
the bank on that particular night – you might
lose darn near all of
it. (You can read
more on this in
the book Daylight
Robbery)
In After America,
Steyn covers off the role
of China, which currently
holds vast swathes of US
and New Zealand debt. The
interest payments alone that
the US is required to make
each year will soon be more
than the annual budget of the entire
Chinese military. China, says Steyn, is
making good use of the interest payments to fund a wide range of operations against Western targets:
Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 15

“In recent years, Beijing has been
engaged in widespread intellectualproperty theft and industrial espionage
against the West; attempted multiple
cyber-attacks on America’s military
and commercial computer systems
[and those of the NZ Government],
blinded US satellites with lasers;
supplied arms to the Taliban; helped
North Korea deliver missiles to Iran
and Pakistan; assisted Tehran with its
nuclear programme; and actively cooperated in a growing worldwide nuclear
black market.

“In response, American ‘realists’
keep telling themselves: Never mind,
economic liberalisation will force
China to democratize. Lather, rinse,
repeat.”
It’s a similar sentiment to those of
New Zealand commentators, so fixated
on the free trade deal with China that
the political implications are lost on
them.
It is not just the geopolitical war
that the West is losing, argues Steyn,
however. The reason we are losing, he
says, is because we have lost our mojo.

16 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

Once upon a time, western civilisation
stood for certain values. Now, he says,
we stand for nothing and are prepared
to fight for nothing.
As exhibit A, he draws on the case of
Marc Lepine Gharbi in Montreal, who
– armed with a gun – walked into a
local polytech and ordered all the men
to leave a particular classroom. The
men meekly “obeyed, and abandoned
their female classmates to their fate –
an act of abdication that would have
been unthinkable in almost any other
culture throughout human history. The
‘men’ stood outside in the corridor and,
even as they heard the first shots, they
did nothing. And, when it was over
and Gharbi walked out of the room
and past them, they still did nothing.
Whatever its defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of
testosterone.”
Fourteen female students lay dead.
Fourteen more were wounded to varying degrees.
Contrast modern manhood with
the Titanic, says Steyn, and the 1912
disaster saw most of the women and
children saved while the majority of
men perished. Forget the film, he says,
where artistic licence turned the men
into cowards for the sake of Hollywood’s agenda; as even Wikipedia
notes: “A disproportionate number
of men—over 90% of those in Second
Class—were left aboard because of a
“women and children first” protocol
followed by the officers loading the
lifeboats.”
In modern ship disasters, there is no
such chivalry present.
“Today, in what Harvey Mansfield
calls our ‘gender neutral society’, there
are no social norms,” says Steyn. “Eight
decades after the Titanic, a Germanbuilt ferry en route from Estonia to
Sweden sank in the Baltic Sea. Of the
1051 passengers, only 139 lived to tell
the tale. But the distribution of the
survivors was very different from that
of the Titanic. Women and children
first? No female under fifteen or over
sixty-five made it. Only five percent
of all women passengers lived. The
bulk of the survivors were young men.
Forty-three percent of men aged 20 to
24 made it.”
Cut forward to the 2012 sinking of

the Italian cruise liner, where even the
captain fled the ship leaving women
and children to their fate, and you can
see the rot has well and truly set in.
At its most basic level, the protection
of women and children is the protection of the future workforce – the
future taxpayers - of a civilisation.
The world learnt, at massive cost, what
happens when youth die en masse, as
happened in both world wars. It leaves
a massive gap with enormous social
implications. While tragedies like shipwrecks are few and far between and of
no statistical consequence to each generation, the attitudes shown in those
disasters nonetheless speak volumes
about the underlying morals and ideals
of each generation. Courage under fire,
or every rat for himself?
In a time of conflict, would we man
up or cut and run? What are we really
made of, these days?

S

ixty years ago, after the war,
Hayek wrote a list of the attributes that made Britain, whatever
her faults, stronger than many other
cultures. Mark Steyn found the rot had
claimed most of those attributes.
“Within little more than half a
century, almost every item on the list
had been abandoned, from ‘independence and self reliance’ (40% of Britons
receive state handouts) to ‘a healthy
suspicion of power and authority’ – the
reflex response now to almost any passing inconvenience is to demand the
government ‘do something’, the cost to
individual liberty be damned.
“In Britain, everything is policed
except crime. The government funded
National Children’s Bureau has urged
nursery teachers and daycare supervisors to record and report every racist
utterance of toddlers as young as three.
Like, what?

“Well, if children ‘react negatively
to a culinary tradition other than
their own by saying Yuk,’ that could
be a clear sign that they’ll grow up to
make racist remarks that could cause
distress…Makes a lot of sense to get
all their names in a big government
database by pre kindergarten.”
The more powerful the State
becomes, the more expensive it
becomes to feed, and the more oppressive it gets. The old adage, give them
an inch and they’ll take a mile, was
never more apt than when applied to
the State.
How did we let it reach the point
where democracy’s light is now dimly
flickering in an increasingly totalitarian West? The Roman satirist Juvenal
coined the phrase “bread and circuses”
to describe the superficial distractions Rome used to keep its citizens
distracted and compliant. In modern
times, argues Steyn, it’s sex:
“The wreckage is impressive. The
Sexual Revolution was well-named:
it was a revolt not just against sexual
norms but against the institutions and
values they supported; it was part of an
assault against any alternatives to government, civic or moral. Utopianism,
writes the philosopher Roger Scruton,
is ‘not in the business of perfecting the
world’ but only of demolishing it: ‘The
ideal is constructed in order to destroy
the actual’.
“Who needs families, or marriage,
or morality? Who needs nations,
especially nations with borders? We’ll
take a jackhammer to the foundations
of functioning society and proclaim
paradise in the ruins.”
Social liberalism, the let-people-dowhat-they-want line of thinking, has
become so ingrained that politicians
today are falling over themselves to
utterly redefine or throw out moral

codes that have been with humanity
for thousands of years. It is, says Steyn,
a race to the bottom.
“ ‘Moderate’ Republicans such as
Arnold Schwarzenegger like to boast
that they’re fiscal conservatives and
social liberals. But the social liberalism always ends up burying the fiscal
conservatism. As Congressman Mike
Pence put it, ‘To those who say we
should simply focus on fiscal issues,
I say you would not be able to print
enough money in a thousand years
to pay for the government you would
need if the traditional family collapses.’
“But the collapse of the traditional
family is already well advanced – and
as part of a conscious Big Government strategy…Big Government’s bias
against marriage and family isn’t an
unforeseen quirk of the tax code. It’s in
logical, strategic support of its mission
– to expand government and diminish
everything else. How’s it going? Well,
40 percent of American children are
now born out of wedlock. A majority
of Hispanic babies are born to unmarried mothers. So are 70 percent of black
children.”
Since Steyn first published those
figures, they’ve worsened. A new study
this year shows nearly two thirds of
babies born to Generation Y – American mothers aged 30 or under – are
born out of wedlock. You might think
it reflects pop-culture and a more easygoing attitude to parenting, but in fact
the statistics show a massive breakdown around social class. Wealthier or
better educated women are more likely
to wait until marriage before having
children. A staggering 92% of women
with university degrees fall into this
category, against only 43% of women
whose highest education was high
school.
‘Marriage has become a luxury

Social liberalism, the let-people-do-what-theywant line of thinking, has become so ingrained
that politicians today are falling over themselves
to utterly redefine or throw out moral codes that
have been with humanity for thousands of years
Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 17

good,’ Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist
at the University of Pennsylvania, told
the Times.
The results carry concerning consequences, with researchers finding
children born out of wedlock are more
likely to struggle in school or suffer
emotional and behavioural problems.
Susan L. Brown from Bowling
Green State University found that
children born to married couples, on
average, ‘experience better education, social, cognitive and behavioural
outcomes’.
In other words, no matter what the
lobbyists tell you, children born to
married couples do better in life. If
true, then that explains our rapid slide.

I

n 1968, 87% of New Zealand babies
were born to married couples. By
2008, only 52% of babies were born
in wedlock – 48% were to unmarried
mothers. Across the ethnic divide, the
price of social breakdown and free love
can be easily seen: In 1968, 72% of Maori
births were to married couples. In 2008,
only 22% were. The rise of the Maori
Renaissance has coincided with a complete family breakdown in Maoridom.
For Pakeha, 89% of babies in 1968 were
born to married mothers. By 2008, that
figure had dropped to 65%.
“Entire new categories of crime
have arisen in the wake of familial
collapse,” says Steyn, “like the legions
of daughters abused by their mum’s
latest live-in boyfriend. Congressman
Pence’s doomsday scenario is already
here: millions and millions of American children are raised in transient
households and moral vacuums that
make not just social mobility but even
elemental character formation all but
impossible.”
In the American city of Detroit,
civilisational collapse is visible on
virtually every street. Grand hotels and
buildings constructed in motor city last

century now lie empty and in ruins.
Why? Part of the reason lies in those
“entitlements” we talked about earlier.
Union muscle negotiated some great
perks in motor city. General Motors
employs 96,000 people, but provides
health benefits to a million people,
Steyn points out. “General Motors, like
the other two geezers of the Old Three,
is a sprawling retirement home with a
small money-losing auto subsidiary…
Faced with a US automobile industry
that so overcompensates its workers it
can’t make a car for a price anybody’s
willing to pay for it, the President
handed over control to the very unions
whose demands are principally responsible for that irreconcilable arithmetic.”
It can’t last. Bailouts and quantitative easing merely delay the ultimately
unavoidable.
“In once functioning parts of Africa,
civil war, a resurgent Islam, and other
forces have done a grand job of reversing all the progress of the twentieth
century. But the deterioration of
Sierra Leone or Somalia is as nothing
compared to the heights from which
Detroit has slid.
“Entire blocks are deserted, and
the city is proposing to turn commercial land back into pasture – on
the unlikely proposition that attracting Michiganders to graze Holsteins
between crack houses will lead to
urban renewal…
“And the physical decay is as nothing
to the deterioration of human capital:
44 percent of adults in the city have a
reading comprehension below Grade
Six level. Or to put it another way:
nearly half the grown-ups in Detroit
could not graduate from elementary
school. And, believe me, what Sixth
Grade requires of American 12 year
olds is no great shakes.
“According to Time magazine, ‘the
estimated functional illiteracy rate in
the city limits hovers near 50 percent’.

With that pool of potential employees,
why would anybody start a business in
Detroit? What could you hire people to
do? Detroit did this to itself.”
In a chilling example of where
America is heading, Steyn quoted from
an email written by Detroit School
Board president Otis Mathis, full of
spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Nonetheless, he’s the head of the city’s
education system. He then contrasted
it with a letter written by Jack the Ripper’s first victim, 43 year old prostitute
Mary Anne Nichols back in 1888 – the
year of her murder. It was word perfect.
Nichols, says Steyn, was born in 1845,
three decades before universal primary
schooling was introduced to Britain.
Yet, “the correspondence of an uneducated domestic servant in and out of
workhouses and prostitution is nevertheless written with better expression,
better spelling, better punctuation
and, indeed, more human feeling that
the president of the School Board in a
major American city.”
Significantly, Detroit education
boss Otis Mathis not only graduated
from high school – he has a university
degree as well. So much for taxpayerfunded education systems.
Detroit is not a city on its own in
the US. Increasingly, sliding literacy
standards are matched by a slide in
morality and a rise of the dog-eat-dog
mentality, coupled with a big rise in
state dependency. America is already
US$16 trillion in debt. Mark Steyn’s
conclusion is inescapable: in the not
too distant future, the number will
be up, the lights will go out. He even
foresees a breakup of the United States
into smaller groupings of like-minded
states, much as the Soviet Union fragmented into different countries.
That Canadian TV interview we
opened with is appropriate to close on:
INTERVIEWER: “Last question,
Mark. I’ve had multiple people in just

Entire new categories of crime have arisen in
the wake of familial collapse,” says Steyn, “like
the legions of daughters abused by their mum’s
latest live-in boyfriend
18 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

the last few days mention that they’re
considering what other countries they
might move to. This isn’t an “Obama
won, I want to leave thing.” It’s people
who think America is headed towards
bankruptcy in the next couple of
decades and they’re afraid to get stuck
here after the country completely falls
apart. What do you think about that?”
STEYN: “I think, for example, if you
look at what we were saying earlier
about America being the reserve currency, at some point you have to figure
that a combination of circumstances
would result in the rug being pulled
out from under the U.S. dollar. At that
point, there is nothing holding us up
and we could be dropping way down
to, you know, Zimbabwe type levels. If
you happen to be sitting on a savings
account, if you happen to have a modest house on a small lot and you think
your modest house and your savings
account are enough to see you through
to the end of your days, you’re in for
a huge shock because you’ll find your

house is worthless and your savings
account is worthless. You’re going to
have to load up the wheelbarrow to buy
the quart of milk.
“I understand people are thinking
like that because I get a lot of mail like
that saying, “Where can I flee to?” Do
you recommend New Zealand or this
kind of thing? I spend a lot of time in
Bermuda because I happen to like it and
if you had to pick somewhere to hole
up, a small civilized British colony with
a temperate climate, 1,000 miles from
anything bad is a great place to go. I
noticed Bermuda already has had a lot
of wealthy Americans coming in and
buying up old estates and things. But,
there is not going to be any place to flee.
In the end, they’ll come for Bermuda, in
the end they’ll come for Monte Carlo,
and in the end you’ll be in Switzerland
and they’ll come for you there because
America is the order maker on the
planet and when America goes, eventually as agreeable as Bermuda is, it slides
in, and it takes Bermuda down in its

wake. So this is the hill to die on.
“One of the greatest lines I get told
by so-called moderate Republicans
about almost anything you talk about
is always, “This isn’t the hill to die on.
This isn’t the hill to die on, this isn’t the
hill to die on.” You have this conversation with them for two hours and you
realize you’re already 15 hills back from
where you were. This, America, is the
hill to die on. If you cannot defend
and save a half millennium of western
liberty and progress and prosperity on
this hill, there is no other hill to die on
anywhere on the planet.”1
References:
1. http://www.rightwingnews.com/
interviews/interviewing-mark-steynabout-his-new-book-after-america-getready-for-armageddon/
After America: Get Ready For
Armageddon by Mark Steyn, Regnery
Press, available on Amazon in Kindle
or print format

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 19

THE VEXED
ISSUE OF
CLIMATE
CHANGE
New Zealand’s decision not to ratify another
round of Kyoto Protocol CO2 targets has
predictably infuriated green lobbyists but,
as IAN WISHART reports, it reflects an
inconvenient truth: much of the world no
longer believes the climate change hype

20 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 21

A

funny thing happened on the way to
the South Pole this
year, but you wouldn’t
know it from the
mainstream media’s
breathless, hyperventilating approach
to climate change.
“In Antarctica,” wrote Fairfax
Media’s John McCrone, “sea ice near
the Antarctic peninsula is seeing a
decline, but is in fact increasing slightly
in other parts.”
In September, Antarctica recorded
its greatest extent of sea ice since the
continent was discovered, 19.45 million
square kilometres of the stuff. “Increasing slightly” was the understatement of
the decade.
As far as the South Pole was concerned, it was the peak of the southern
winter. Between now and the peak of
summer, Antarctic sea ice extent will
shrink again, but even so the continent
is still refusing to live up to its manufactured reputation as a climate change
‘poster child’.
Again, not that you’d know it from
the media:
“Parts of the Antarctic ice caps
were melting at unprecedented rates”,
reported a gullible AAP last month.
Given that the main Antarctic ice
cap lives in an environment where the
temperature ranges from minus 40
degrees Celsius to minus 90, readers
can rest assured that the Antarctic
ice cap is in absolutely no danger of
“melting” – a feat that would require
temperatures above zero.
What the data does show is that
warm ocean currents are licking the
edges of the ice shelves, melting the
extremities that reach into the sea, like
glacier outlets. But then again, that

has always been the case – it’s part of
the natural Antarctic cycle. Ice melts
on the edges during summer because
of warmer currents, and in return it
evaporates and is then dumped again
as snow in the interior, to begin its
journey to the sea all over again. It is
dumped as snow because, of course, it
is too cold for rain to exist.
No matter what the Christchurch
Press or NZ Herald tell you, there is no
chance of land-based ice on the main
continent of Antarctica disappearing.
Warmer ocean currents might take the
fingers that drizzle into the sea, but
they can’t impact on the major ice cap
where it doesn’t touch the water. With
Antarctic sea ice reaching record levels
(we will define ‘record’ in a moment),

clearly the oceans are not so warm as
to prevent ice from forming.
Why is Antarctica important?
Because polar ice provides what is
known in the climate trade as ‘albedo’
– a reflective surface that sends sunlight and therefore incoming infrared
heat back into space. If the ice melted,
the land and sea would absorb more
heat and provide a global warming tipping point.
Most of the world’s attention has
been on ice melt in the Arctic, probably
because it is closer and more accessible
to major news bureaux in New York
and London. But Antarctica is more
important.
In our current orbital cycle, the
southern hemisphere is closer to the

Given that the main Antarctic ice cap lives in an
environment where the temperature ranges from
minus 40 degrees Celsius to minus 90, readers can
rest assured that the Antarctic ice cap is in absolutely
no danger of “melting” – a feat that would require
temperatures above zero
22 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

sun during our summer than the
northern hemisphere is during the
northern summer. That means the sun
is much stronger as it powers into the
South Pole than it ever is over the Arctic. In turn, that means the Antarctic
ice is having to work much harder than
Arctic ice to reflect light.
The fact that Antarctica is maintaining record ice levels despite facing a
much more powerful southern sun and
despite facing supposedly record CO2
levels is a sign that CO2 is probably not
playing a major role at all.
But what does the word “record”
mean in these contexts? If you listen to
climate scientists quoted in the alarmist news media, you’d probably be
convinced by these latter-day Chicken

Littles that the sky was indeed, falling.
“Changes in ocean flows and shifts in
Antarctic ice cap levels were occurring
at rates faster than at any other time
in history,” Australia’s chief Antarctic
Division scientist Nick Gales reportedly told an Australian senate hearing
last month.
In history?
“That’s the part that is the most
dramatic about the information we’re
receiving,” Gales told senators.
When you remember that Antarctica
was only discovered in 1772, and no
one set foot there until the 1820s, and
much of it remained unmapped until
around 1900, the words “in history”
and “record” don’t really have a long
pedigree when it comes to Antarctica.

There has been no long-term continuous monitoring of Antarctica
sufficient to seriously anchor the “in
history” phrase; scientists simply don’t
know how fast ice has come and gone
in the past because no direct observation was ever made. Instead, they
are forced to rely on secondary, fossil
evidence for clues to climate change in
the polar south.
“The role of scientists are [sic] not to
be alarmists, and not to downplay the
data, but simply to report it,” Dr Gales
told senators.

Y

et if he was simply reporting
the data objectively, why was
there no apparent reference to
the limitations of history and records.
At best, scientists can say things are
happening in Antarctica faster than
they’ve happened in a hundred years,
but the significance of that is at best a
guess. What is natural for Antarctica? We simply don’t know because
we haven’t been observing it for long
enough.
Instead, Gales comments were
picked up by the media as proof of
unprecedented change in Antarctica,
with no qualification.
To get an idea of just how meaningless the “in history” comments are,
remember that Earth began pulling
out of a four century ‘little ice-age’ in
the mid 1800s and began warming up
again, naturally. That warming cycle
continues, and we are not yet as toasty
as the naturally-occurring Medieval
Warm Period of 1200 AD which saw
wine grown across Britain.
As a result of the recovery from the
Little Ice Age, we expect to see evidence and consequences of warming
in Antarctica, and we are. The issue is,
are those changes human-caused, as
argued by climate scientists, or naturally caused, as the evidence suggests? If
they are natural, then while they may be
“unprecedented” in human experience
over the past century, they may nonetheless be totally typical of the ebb and
flow of Antarctic ice through the ages.
If that’s indeed the case, then the
Stuff website headline, “Climate science
‘not alarmist’” can be seen as a load of
old cobblers.
As if to emphasise the point, new

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 23

scientific data is casting massive doubt
on claims of ice loss in Antarctica.
For the past decade, climate scientists have relied on data from the
GRACE satellite, which measures
gravitational changes in the mass of
the ice cap. It’s an inexact science,
because gravitational changes can also
appear for other reasons. Nonetheless, GRACE has suggested a loss of ice
from Antarctica of 138 billion tonnes
a year between 2002 and 2005, give or
take 73 billion tonnes in the margin for
error. While such a huge ice mass loss
sounds devastating, it equates to 0.2
millimetres of sea level rise per year. If
we kept losing ice at this rate, Antarctica would cause a sea level rise of 1.8
centimetres by 2100.
Try measuring that on a beach.

N

ew data, however, is casting
doubt even on this minor
amount of ice loss. Because of
the deficiencies in GRACE, a specially
designed polar satellite known as
ICESat has been scoping Antarctica
and measuring the height of the ice
sheet by pointing laser beams at it from
space. The ICESat data is stunning, and
like kryptonite for climate Chicken
Littles.
Rather than losing ice overall, “during 2003 to 2008, the mass gain of the
Antarctic ice sheet from snow accumulation exceeded the mass loss from
ice discharge by 49 billion tonnes per
year,” reported a US scientific study in
July this year. And that’s just the mass
gain from snowfall. Overall, the West
Antarctic and East Antarctic ice sheets
recorded a net ice gain of 86 billion
tonnes a year over the same period.
It is true, noted the study, that some
parts of Antarctica, notably around
Pine Island and the Antarctic Peninsula, are losing a total of around
114 billion tonnes of ice a year, but in
contrast net ice increases across the

rest of the southern pole “exceed the
increased losses”.
In other words, Antarctica is gaining ice, not losing it, even though in
those areas that are affected by warmer
ocean currents the losses are spectacular and make great TV.
Pine Island, incidentally, is a special
case. Scientists have only recently
discovered that a ridgeline of ancient
volcanoes have fired up directly underneath the Pine Island glacier, which
happens to be losing the most ice of
all the glaciers in Antarctica. Could
lighting a fire under the ice be causing it to melt? Climate scientists and
Greenpeace activists lobbying for more
funding would prefer you didn’t know
about the volcanoes under the ice.
The daily media and climate lobby
groups have also hidden the reason for
this year’s record sea ice minimum in
the Arctic. While trumpeting the ‘melt’
as proof of climate change, what crusading journalists did not tell you was that
a large storm that lingered across the
Arctic for several days pushed sea ice
south into warmer currents where it
melted. Yes, it was a record low, but ultimately created by a weather event rather
than a warmer atmosphere melting the
ice. A similar storm was responsible for
2007’s sea ice minimum.
In sharp contrast, once the storm
moved off, Arctic waters rapidly refroze – faster than we’ve seen since
satellite recordings began in 1979.
Throw in the inconvenient truth that
both Antarctic ice sheets and deep ocean
currents can take centuries to react to
warm temperatures – meaning current
ice loss may be a delayed reaction to the
heatwave of the Medieval Warm Period
800 years ago – and you have a huge
questionmark over the “human-caused”
hypothesis of climate change.
Why, then, are we continuing to see
media hype over global warming? The
answer, as it usually does, centres on

money and power. For climate scientists
seeking funding grants, the climate
scare means money and prestige among
their peers. For politicians and big business seeking to leverage off the climate
scare, it is power and money combined. Extra taxes levied in the name
of saving the planet are extra taxes, no
matter how you slice and dice them,
and taxpayer subsidies for inefficient
technology like wind and solar power,
or biofuels, mean money and public
relations ‘greenwash’ for big corporates.
TV, newspapers and the climate handwringers passing themselves off as radio
journalists thrive, meanwhile, on the
drama of the big story.
If climate change is the new religion,
and CO2 emissions are the new ‘original sin’, the news media and climate
lobbyists are the new unholy priesthood urging the public to repent and
pay tithes.
Is the world warming
uncontrollably?
In a word, no. Official figures reveal
no significant warming since 1998, and
the earth is currently in a cool phase.
This is despite levels of CO2 continuing
to climb in the atmosphere.
There’s also intense debate about
just how much warming the planet
has faced over the past century, after
revelations in 2010 that government
climate agencies in NZ, Australia, the
UK and US have been changing old
temperature records to make it seem
like the past was colder.
Why would they do that? Because if
you make it seem as though the world
was cooler in the 1920s, then you end up
with an apparently steeper line of global
warming through to the present day,
which enables you to keep issuing press
releases about “record temperatures”, or
“the hottest year on record”. It’s much
easier to fool the public if you can make
hot years in the past simply disappear.
The infamous “hockey stick” graph

The infamous “hockey stick” graph used by Al Gore
and the UN IPCC notoriously made hotter years in the
middle ages disappear, enabling politicians to claim
modern warming was “unprecedented”
24 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

used by Al Gore and the UN IPCC
notoriously made hotter years in the
middle ages disappear, enabling politicians to claim modern warming was
“unprecedented”. In truth, numerous
studies have shown the Medieval Warm
Period was hotter than we are today.
If you read a newspaper headline or
see a climate blogger talking about hottest years, ask them whether the data
they rely on has been doctored.
In the three years since the Copenhagen climate talks collapsed after
a failed attempt to usher in a world
government structure to control
climate taxes and carbon trading, the
world has come no closer to reaching
agreement. New Zealand’s decision
not to embark on another round of

meaningless Kyoto commitments was
inevitable.
It would be foolish to assume,
however, that the agenda of a new
global bureaucracy, funded from the
pockets of Joe and Jo Citizen, has been
dropped. The diplomats who failed to
push it through in one hit are increasingly working the agenda into free
trade deals, as the East Asia Forum has
noted on the Trans Pacific Partnership
negotiations involving NZ and the US:
“Mark Linscott, an assistant US
Trade Representative, declared that
‘an environment chapter in the TPP
should strengthen country commitments to enforce their environmental
laws and regulations, including in
areas related to ocean and fisheries

governance, through the effective
enforcement obligation subject to dispute settlement’.
“Meanwhile, Inside US Trade has
commented: ‘While not initially
expected to be among the most difficult areas, the environment chapter
has emerged as a formidable challenge,
partly due to disagreement over the US
proposal to make environmental obligations binding under the TPP dispute
settlement mechanism’.”
The moral of the story: climate
change is not catastrophic, but it is
being used as a political Trojan horse
to gain greater control over your life
and to extract more money from your
wallet through higher energy costs and
taxes. Believe the hype at your peril.

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 25

classic

UNHOLY

WAR
The origins of the Israel/
Palestine conflic

Ten years ago, Investigate published a story on
the background to the Middle East problem.
At the time, the late Yasser Arafat’s forces
were escalating the Intifada uprising. Now,
in 2012, Jerusalem is again at the centre of a
powderkeg, and it seems like an opportune
time to revisit an Investigate classic
WORDS BY IAN WISHART

T

MAY 2002 ISSUE

he roots of today’s
Middle East conflict
may have more to
do with Hitler’s Nazi
holocaust than many
in the west realise. As
Israeli forces pound
Palestinian and Hezbollah positions on
a sporadic basis, and suicide bombers
wreak havoc in Jerusalem, it is difficult to reconstruct history’s divergent
strands and work out where the conflict has its origins. Difficult, perhaps.
But not impossible.
As tank shells and machine gun
rounds rip holes in buildings and people alike, it is easy to point the finger in
the Palestine conflict and make moral
judgements. But where did the battle

really begin? Why is there such enmity
between both sides?
Western news reports usually focus
on the creation of the Israeli state in
1948 as the catalyst, but increasingly
experts are dusting off old news clippings and government reports dating
back to the First World War to get a
handle on the problem. Why? Because
it seems the popular view of heavilyarmed Jewish settler/terrorists kicking
Palestinians out of their homes in the
late 1940s may be only half the story.
It actually traces back to the emergence of two men – one the uncle of
current1 Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat, the other regarded as the father
of modern Israel.
In 1893, in a dusty stone abode in

26 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

what was then Turkish-controlled
Palestinian Jerusalem, a baby boy
named Haj Amin el-Husseini entered
the world, oblivious to the course
his life would take. That course was
already being determined thanks to the
work of Theodore Herzl, a Zionist who
envisioned the return of the world’s
Jews – scattered since the Roman times
– to Israel.
Herzl was organising the return of
Jews to the area, admittedly in small
groups at first.
As a teenager El-Husseini began to
resent the Jewish immigrants, but put
his personal feelings on hold to fight in
World War One as part of the Ottoman
Imperial Army against the British.
When the Turkish were defeated, Brit-

ain took control of the Palestinian area
under a League of Nations mandate
and, in accordance with its own stated
policies, announced the creation of a
Jewish National Homeland in Palestine
(the Balfour Declaration).
The problem was, British officials
governing neighbouring Egypt who
sympathised with the Palestinians had
previously indicated Britain would
favour Arab interests above the Jews.
Although Jewish immigrants were
at this point buying land and businesses, not seizing them, the immigration wave and growing political
and economic power of the Jews was
causing societal tensions, in much the
same way but on a much larger scale
to the Asian immigration wave to New
Zealand of the nineties.
By 1920 tensions on the ground had
risen to boiling point, and British
officials on the ground gave 27 year
old Haj Amin tacit approval to attack
Jewish settlers. It came in the form
of a meeting between British Colonel
Waters Taylor and Haj Amin just a few
days before Easter 1920.
According to official British records
of what followed, the Colonel told him
“he had a great opportunity at Easter
to show the world…that Zionism was
unpopular not only with the Palestine
Administration but in Whitehall and
if disturbances of sufficient violence
occurred in Jerusalem at Easter, both
General Bols [Chief Administrator in
Palestine] and General Allenby [Commander of Egyptian Force] would
advocate the abandonment of the
Jewish Home. Waters-Taylor explained
that freedom could only be attained
through violence.”
Haj Amin took it on board, but
rather than adopting the traditional
British technique of subtlety, he openly
led the riot that followed. As part of
what was supposed to be the secret
arrangement, British soldiers and
police were withdrawn from Jerusalem
over Easter, which allowed Arab mobs
to attack Jews and loot their shops
without interference.
When Jewish settlers regrouped and
counter-attacked, they were arrested by
the British and received up to 15 years’
jail. Haj Amin, because of his public
role, was also arrested but escaped,
Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 27

and was sentenced to 10 years’ jail in
absentia.
It was a token punishment. Just
one year later Haj Amin’s allies in the
British administration had arranged
for him to be pardoned, and promoted
to Grand Mufti – the official Muslim
leader of the territory. Within three
weeks, forces loyal to Haj Amin massacred 43 Jews in riots, the first of many
attacks. Again, Jews who fought back
were often arrested as part of the nudge
and wink agreement between the British authorities and Mufti Haj Amin.
In 1929, rumours were spread by Haj
Amin’s forces that Jewish religious
ceremonies at the Western Wall of
the Temple Mount would be used as a
pretense by the Jews to attack Islam’s
Dome of Rock. The huge Arab population were incensed and attacked the
Jews, killing 133 and injuring 399.

A

n official investigation by British officials determined that the
riots were caused by Arab fears
about increased Jewish immigration,
and the inquiry determined that Jewish immigration and land purchases
should be restricted.
The Mufti, meanwhile, consolidated
his status with the Palestinians by
fundraising internationally for a refit of
the Dome of the Rock, raising enough
money to plate it in gold, but he was
forced to flee Palestine after fomenting
a rebellion in 1936 that finally put him
offside with Britain.
Ironically, Haj Amin’s agenda was

not the creation of a Palestinian state:
he firmly believed Palestine was part of
Jordan and Syria.
Haj Amin el-Husseini resurfaced in
1941 in Hitler’s Germany, meeting with
the Fuhrer on a number of occasions
and urging him to step up his ethnic
cleansing against Jews, not just in
Europe but in the Middle East.
The Grand Mufti formulated 15
drafts of declarations he wanted
Germany and Italy to adopt, including
declaring the Jewish homeland in Palestine illegal and giving Arabs free rein
to adopt holocaust methods against
the Palestinian Jews, by according “to
Palestine and to other Arab countries
the right to solve the problem of the
Jewish elements in Palestine and other
Arab countries, in accordance with the
interests of the Arabs, and by the same
method, that the question is now being
settled in the Axis countries.”
Haj Amin knew the methods Hitler
was using, having toured Auschwitz
and, according to Nazi records, urging
the gas chamber guards to work more
“diligently” in wiping out Jews.
During his time in Germany,
according to testimony to the Nuremberg Trials, the Palestinian leader was
also instrumental in sinking a deal
being brokered between Nazi leader
Adolf Eichmann and the British that
would have seen German POWs in
Britain freed in exchange for the Nazis
agreeing to release 5,000 Jewish children from concentration camps.
Haj Amin managed to torpedo the
prisoner exchange,
convincing the Nazi
party to instead
transfer the children from holding
camps in Bulgaria
to the main camps
at Auschwitz and
Belsen. Most are
believed to have
perished.
Speaking on
Radio Berlin in
1943, Haj Amin
el Husseini urged
Muslims in
Europe to join the
Nazis in exterminating the Jews,

28 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

“Kill the Jews wherever you find them
– this is pleasing to Allah.”
The Palestinian leader also travelled
to Bosnia in 1943, personally recruiting
Bosnian Muslims to a special division
of Hitler’s Waffen SS troops. The Bosnian division slaughtered more than
9,000 Bosnian Jews, and destroyed
Serbian churches and villages. The
seeds of much of the recent Serbian
aggression against Bosnian Muslims
were sown here.
Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler
was so impressed with the Bosnian SS
that he established a “Mullah Military
School” in Dresden.
When Germany ultimately lost the
war, Haj Amin was captured by French
forces and indicted as a Nazi war
criminal, but again managed to escape
and fled to Egypt to continue his battle
against Israeli Jews.
The creation of Israel was mandated
by the United Nations in 1947. It split
the region in half. Ironically, had the
Palestinians accepted this settlement
they would have been far better off
than they currently are.
Instead, the Grand Mufti and the
Arab nations decided to wage war for a
reclamation of 100% of the Palestinian
region and a desire, particularly on Haj
Amin’s part, to finish the job that Hitler
started. He didn’t want Jewish settlers
captured. He wanted them dead.
What followed at the urging of Haj
Amin can be directly blamed for the
Palestinian refugee problem. On May
15, 1948, he appealed to the Arabs of
Palestine to leave their homes and leave
the country, because Arab armies were
about to come in to drive out the Jews.
The Palestinians did leave, but their
liberators didn’t bother to show up, as a
Jordanian newspaper noted in February 1949:
“The Arab states, which had encouraged the Palestinian Arabs to leave
their homes temporarily in order to
be out of the way of the Arab invasion
armies, have failed to keep their promises to return.”
As another displaced Palestinian
lamented: “The Arab governments told
us ‘Get out, so that we can get in’. So we
got out, but they did not get in.”
One of the Grand Mufti’s most
enthusiastic recruits was his nephew,

Abd al-Rahman abd al-Bauf Arafat
al-Qud al-Husseini, who set up the Palestinian resistance movement el-Fatah
in response to the huge boost in Jewish
immigration to the territory. Abd alRahman’s first troops initially greeted
him and Haj Amin with the infamous
Nazi salute.
Today, Abd al-Rahman is better
known to the West as Yasser Arafat.
In 1956, after Egypt nationalised the
Suez canal and Palestinian resistance
groups stepped up attacks on Israeli
settlements, Israel lashed out by invading Egypt, capturing the Sinai desert
on the east bank of the canal. When
the dust settled, a United Nations
peacekeeping force was installed to act
as a buffer and prevent further attacks
on Israel from Egyptian insurgents.

B

y 1967, however, after months
of sabre-rattling on both sides,
Egypt signed a military treaty
with Syria and Jordan, re-invaded
the Sinai desert and closed the Gulf
of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. Israel
responded with a devastating pre-emptive strike, shattering the Egyptian,
Syrian and Jordanian armies in just six
days and capturing huge tracts of new
territory, including much of the now
disputed West Bank.
In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a
surprise counter-attack on the eve of
a Jewish religious holiday. It was only
through American intervention in the
form of weapon supplies that Israel
survived and was able to defeat the
invasion forces.
Why did America become involved?
A primary reason was the involvement
of the Soviet Union behind the scenes
in supplying Egypt and Syria with
weaponry. In fact, Russia was preparing
to send its own troops into the region
to help finish Israel off, and was only
deterred when the United States placed
its armed forces on “full nuclear alert”.
At the end of the war, the US insisted
that Egypt and Israel thrash out a
workable peace deal. That peace process continued throughout the eighties
and nineties, resulting in the creation
of Yasser Arafat’s self-governing Palestinian Authority in 1993.
But always just under the surface
have been competing agendas – from

the Palestinian side the growing
allegiance to Islamic fundamentalism
based on the Koran’s instruction to
“kill the infidels where you find them”,
and from the Israeli side by right-wing
governments continuing to allow Jewish settlers to build homes on captured
Palestinian land.
The problem with modern journalism is that much of the past is being
ignored. The new book by New Zealander Lloyd Geering, Who Owns The
Holy Land?, for example, fails to mention the extensive Nazism of Grand
Mufti Haj Amin, leaving readers with
an arguably unbalanced picture of the
passions at the heart of this conflict.
And Geering’s glaring omissions
are typical, rather than the exception.
One peace group, the MidEast Web
for Coexistence, a joint Islamic/Jewish
friendship organisation, has recently
fired a number of bullets at zealots who
deliberately hide the truth:
“What is not told is as important
as what is told. The pen of the Jewish
extremist makes the massacre of Deir
Yassin disappear – over a hundred
dead people are banished to nowhere.
The pen of the Palestinian partisan
erases the siege of Jerusalem and the
Arab invasion of 1948. A writer in
the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram,
waves his magic pen and the Holocaust
disappears. None of it happened. The
Jewish extremist erases the Palestinian refugees. Reality is rearranged for
convenience.
“Time and again, words create reality
and programme actions. The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic
forgery of the Czarist secret police, is
enshrined in the charter of the Hamas
and propels Muslim extremists to their
death. Osama Bin Laden wrote his
Fatwas against America, and the words
toppled mighty buildings. The Mufti of
Jerusalem said ‘the Jews are destroying
the holy Mosque of Al Aqsa’ and the
riots of 1929 began. The same rumour
started bloodier riots in 1997 and again
in September 2000 [the start of the
current uprising].
“At this moment, as is usual in our
area, a battle is raging. The words
are fighting alongside the tanks and
bombs. Partisans are busy rewriting
history. Suicide bombers are being

written out by one side, civilian casualties are being written out by the other.
“Words are changing history, and
people are being programmed to act on
the words, never mind what happened.
So the words help to create reality.”
Among the “words” being bandied around is the figure of 590,000
displaced Palestinians, turned into
refugees by the creation of Israel in
1948. But a lesser known figure is the
850,000 Arab Jews who were forced to
flee from their homelands in ten Arab
states when the fighting broke out, also
leaving behind homes and belongings,
businesses, land and flocks. Those Jews
were taken in by Israel. None has been
compensated by the Arab states for the
money and property they left behind.
In other words, it cuts both ways.
Strip away the rhetoric, and you are
left with two men: Yasser Arafat, the
one-time protégé of a self-confessed
Nazi collaborator whose wish was to
see all Jews gassed, and Ariel Sharon,
holocaust survivor, Israeli terrorist
turned military leader.
While you could point to Sharon’s
involvement in the Deir Yassin massacre of Palestinian women and children
in 1948, you could also point to Arafat’s
uncle personally ensuring the deaths of
thousands of Jews in Europe. You could
point to the wave of Jewish immigration
in the early 1900s, but you could also
point to the Palestinian massacres of
those same Jewish settlers.
Neither side is innocent in this conflict, but commonsense shows that had
the Arab states accepted the UN fiftyfifty carve-up of Palestine in 1947, the
Palestinians would have owned a lot
more land than the 22% they currently
occupy as a result of Israel capturing
territory during failed Arab invasions.
Having taken a gamble on the “might
is right” option and lost, the Palestinians now seek to recover the territory
they gave to the victors through a
diplomatic solution.
Whilst there is an overwhelming
pragmatism to such a solution, any
Palestinian claim to occupy the moral
high-ground is looking increasingly
dubious.
References:
1. As of 2002. Arafat died in November 2004

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 29

invest

by peter hensley

A big investment gamble

“ B

ut it is all fundamentally distorted,” Moira
said to her friend, Christine.
Christine pretended to understand, not
that it bothered Moira, who was on a mission to
save the world from financial Armageddon. She
wanted to verbalise her thoughts and Christine was
as good a sounding board as any.
Christine only called in on the off chance to have
a cup of tea, biscuit and a chat. Little did she know
that Moira had been attempting to understand
and in turn comprehend the world’s current fiscal
situation.

30 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

Jim, Moira’s husband, had dutifully supplied
the cup of tea and biscuits while at the same time
sneaking a couple extra for himself. He then disappeared into the study to play Facebook poker on the
computer. Playing poker that way was free, as the
chips were not real and he got temporary relief from
listening to Moira’s latest economic theorizing. He
did not give much thought to the price of Facebook
shares – he left Moira to worry about that generally – but he often wondered how Facebook generated any income in order to justify its overvalued
share price. Facebook had recently listed on the US
market with an opening market price of USD$38, in
a couple of hours it had reached $44 before ebbing
like an outgoing tide to drop below $30.
Meanwhile, out in the conservatory, Christine
politely replied, “I don’t understand what you
mean”.
“I am not sure I do either,” said Moira.
“Let me try and explain it in simple terms. When
you lend money to someone you expect them to
pay interest whilst they have your money and give
it back at the end of the agreed term.”
“That sounds logical,” Christine responded, trying to work out what the catch was.
“Well, last month Germany borrowed 4.5 billion
Euros at zero percent interest for two years,” Moira
said.
Christine and Moira had been friends for a long
time, yet they had never had a conversation like
this. She could tell that Moira was clearly worked
up and, whilst she had limited knowledge about
global investment trends, she felt an obligation to
try and help her friend. She said the first thing that
came into her head.
“Who did they borrow it from?” Christine asked.
“A bunch of fund managers who are obviously
looking for a safe place to park some money,”
Moira replied, “But that’s my problem, it doesn’t
make any sense. Why would anyone loan money
and expect no return?”
“It must make sense otherwise why would they
do it?” Christine replied. “They have a responsibility to make a return, that is their job, it’s what they
get paid for. Let’s think about it.”
Moira was at her wits end and willing to give
anything a try. She had discussed it at length with

Jim and he had given up and gone to play poker on
the computer.
Christine was a true friend. She knew precious
little about international finances, yet she was
willing to help a friend who was obviously in need.
“Let’s see,” she said. “A bunch of people called fund
managers loaned the German central bank €4.5
billion for two years and the Germans promised to
pay it back after two years”.
Christine continued “We know that the Euro is
in trouble, what with all the talk about recession
going on, aren’t they providing bail outs and trying
to help them?”
“But that’s my problem,” said Moira, “They are
printing money and if I have said it once I have
said it a thousand times: you can’t borrow your way
out of debt.”
Then Christine said, “My financial adviser says
that you may not be able to borrow your way out of
debt, however it is possible to inflate your way out
of debt.”
“My point exactly. Everybody knows that central
Governments around the globe are printing money
like there is no tomorrow and that is concerning
me as well. If they keep printing they will certainly
let the inflation genie out of the bottle. And we all
know once she gets out, she can prove very difficult
to get back in.”
“I thought that central Governments were fighting deflation, not inflation,” Christine responded.
She could see Moira open her mouth and take a
deep breath, so she quickly said “And before you
say anything more, I think you have been looking
at this problem the wrong way around.”
Moira was immediately curious.
Christine continued, “From what I understand
you have been thinking that the economic world is
off to hell in a handcart. Central Governments are
printing money like wallpaper, the Euro is doomed
and everybody should invest in gold as it is the
only store of value that will be recognised as real
money. Obviously not everybody thinks like that.
“Right now, the popular perception is that the
Euro is doomed as a failed economic experiment.
What would happen if the Euro went up in value
over the next two years?”
Moira was stunned. She had to admit that she
had been prejudiced and adopted a myopic look at
the world. She had forgotten to consider the alternatives. Over a simple cup of tea, Christine had
shown her the importance of having a balanced
point of view.
It had taken a bunch of European fund managers
to prove that whilst the system appeared broken, it
was still operating. The fund managers had done
their job and taken a bet, (a big one at that) that
the system would be better in two years. They were
making a counter intuitive investment. Sure, the

If they keep printing they will
certainly let the inflation genie
out of the bottle. And we all know
once she gets out, she can prove
very difficult to get back in

Ideal for home users, the
Expression Home all-purpose
multifunction printer range
including, the Expression Home
XP-200, Expression Home
XP-300 and Expression Home
XP-400. Significantly smaller in
size compared to previous Epson
multifunction printers the new
Expression Home range still
retains all the necessary easy
to use features that allow users
to perform day to day printing,
scanning and copying all in a
new ultra-compact size. All three
Expression Home models have
automatic Wi-Fi set-up making
printing wirelessly from anywhere
around the home extremely.
The XP-200 is RRP$119, the
XP-300 is RRP$149 and the
XP-400 is RRP$169.
www.epson.co.nz

2

Nook HD

Packed with pixels, NOOK
HD’s brilliant display delivers text,
graphics, and video with stunning
HD clarity. Which means every
book, movie, and app looks
better than ever before. NOOK
HD puts a world of reading &
entertainment at your fingertips.
Explore over 3 million books,
magazines, videos, apps, catalogs
& more in the newly expanded
NOOK Store. No other 7”
tablet is lighter than NOOK HD.
Designed to fit naturally in your
hand, NOOK HD goes anywhere
and is easy for anyone – even a
child – to hold for hours. NOOK
HD has all the most popular
apps, including games, business,
news and weather, cooking,
entertainment, lifestyle, and a
special selection of games and
learning tools just for kids.
www.barnesandnoble.com

32 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

3

Sony RX1

The world’s smallest Full
Frame camera, it’s ideal for
everyday exploring with a Full
Frame 24.3MP sensor, a large
aperture, fixed focal length
F2.0 Carl Zeiss Sonnar T lens
& full manual controls. Sonnar
comes from Sonne, which means
“sun” in German, to highlight
the bright, clear pictures this
lens delivers. It creates sharp,
high contrast images and the
multilayer T coating reduces
ghosting and flare, for even
greater image clarity. A Full
Frame Exmor CMOS sensor
and BIONZ processor deliver
detailed, vivid shots, better than
many DSLRs. When you want
to capture the scene exactly as
it is, the Full Frame sensor has a
wide dynamic range for delicately
lighting and expressive colours.
www.sony.com

4

Nokia Lumia 920

This is Lumia. With Carl Zeiss
lens, PureView technology with
Optical Image Stablisation, and a
4.5’’ PureMotion HD+ display.
PureView camera technology
with Optical Image Stabilization
and a Carl Zeiss lens means your
pictures and videos are detailed,
blur-free and bright, no matter
what light conditions you’re in. No
other cameraphone even comes
close. Now you can boost your
Nokia Lumia’s battery without
plugging it in. Nokia Lumia 920
has wireless charging built-in. This
new Lumia 920 also comes with
PureMotion HD+. A display that
is the world’s brightest, fastest
and most sensitive touchscreen:
enough to make every colour
clear, and sensitive enough to
respond to your fingertips – even
when they are covered.
www.nokia.com

mall

2
1
4

1

Bang & Olufsen
BeoPLay A9

The A9 is designed and crafted
like a beautiful piece of furniture
– with a careful selection of
materials and a great attention
to detail. The days of wanting to
hide your bulky black stereo are
over. No matter where you chose
to place the A9, it’s going to look
beautiful. Don’t look for a volume
dial or buttons, just swipe your
hand gently sideways along the
top and the volume will increase.
It’s like having a magic touch. The
A9 is a complete stereo system
in one very neat package. This
means that you won’t have to
buy extra amplifiers, speakers,
cables or other accessories. All
you need is a phone, a tablet or a
music player that streams music
through Apple Airplay or the open
streaming standard DLNA.
www.beoplay.com

2

Citizen Proximity

The Citizen Proximity
Bluetooth watch is compatible
with the iPhone 4S or newer
iPhone models. After purchasing
your Citizen Proximity watch
you will receive a free app. Once
you have downloaded the app
your iPhone will sync with your
watch. Now we are ready to
go! Your phone can now control
the settings on your watch. By
discreetly vibrating when you
receive a text, call or email your
watch will discreetly adjust
the second hand to point to an
appropriate indicator, alerting you
to what type of communication
you have received. Another
fabulous feature available on the
Citizen Proximity watch is its
ability to correct the time and
date to that of the country you
are currently situated in.
www.citizenwatch.com

3
3

Sony VAIO Tap 20

Feel free to roam room to
room with VAIO Tap. With a
built-in battery, you can take
this portable PC from bedroom
to kitchen to couch without
the hassle of unplugging and
rebooting. Hold it flat in your
lap to play a game, or position
it upright for movie night. The
same BRAVIA technology found
in Sony TVs delivers a beautifully
clear, bright picture whether
watching a movie or surfing the
web. Powerful surround sound
completes the equation with
excellent audio. And with the
ultra-responsive touchscreens
featured on VAIO Tap and L
Series PCs, a world of fascinating
touch games and apps is yours
to explore.
www.sony.com

4

Larklife Wristband
& App

In an increasingly crowded circle
of health tracking devices, here
comes one of the strongest
debuts – larklife wristband and
app. In additional to the standard
activity tracking features, larklife
is able to differentiate between
running and walking states, can
be used as a silent, sleepcycleaware alarm clock, and, through
its smartphone app, provides
the simplest integrated calorie
tracking solution out there. The
shipping date is not yet public,
however rumor has it we will be
able to get our hands on it before
the end of the year.
www. lark.com

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 33

tech

by jim rossman

For big-screen enthusiasts

E

very time I think I’m completely happy with
my iPhone, I see another Android model that
has a newer, bigger, faster feature that I covet.
Now I’m reviewing Samsung’s new Galaxy Note
II, the second-generation Note that brings all of its
features together under what has to be one of the
biggest screens on a phone.
It’s no secret that if you’re in the market for a
Note II, you’re screen-size obsessed.
I don’t blame you.
I love the iPhone 5’s larger screen, and as a person
who has rather large pockets, I’d say bigger is
better.
The Note II boasts a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED
screen with a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels. To give
you a size comparison, my iPhone 5’s entire body fits
entirely inside the screen area of the Note II.
You’d think the Note II would be too big for
one-handed use, but Samsung has thoughtfully
included a special one-handed mode. If you need
to type with one thumb, the size of the keyboard
or phone keypad can be reduced slightly and
anchored to the right or left edge.
If you’ve never used a Samsung Note, you’ll be
either pleasantly surprised or horrified that the
phone has a built-in
stylus. The Note II
pen’s features are
much improved
from the previous
model.
The S Pen lets
you draw on the
screen in almost any
application. Draw
a map in an email,
enter calendar events
by hand, and even
highlight days on
your calendar with
the color of your
choice. You can even
draw a box on the
screen and immediately capture that
screen data, copy it

34 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

and paste it somewhere else.
Samsung knows Note II users are big note-takers.
S Note is a combination note-taking/document
creation app that’s kind of like Apple’s Pages app
but with the ability to use pen input as well.
When you launch S Note, you’re presented with
templates for creating your own documents or
you can start with a blank screen. You can fully
customize the pen’s tip, color and size and choose
from other pen types, such as paintbrush or
markers.
Entering text or drawings on the screen is easy
with the stylus, and you can switch to typed input
with the onscreen keyboard instantly. Inserting
photos, graphics or audio into your notes is simple
as well. Notes can be shared with other Note users
via S Beam or with everyone else by converting the
notes to JPG or PDF files.
The Note II and a slew of other Samsung phones
have near field communication, a technology that
enables the phone to read and react to chips in
other devices.
Samsung describes its TecTiles stickers as “an
introduction to the user-friendly capabilities of
NFC beyond mobile payments.”
TecTiles are small NFC chips that can be programmed to perform actions on the phone such
as turning features on or off, launching apps and
setting up preloaded phone profiles. Set up what
you’d like the TecTile to do and program the chip.
Anytime you touch the phone to the TecTile, that
action will occur.
The Note II has more features, including a $39.99
protective flip cover that replaces the phone’s battery cover.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Easy Mode,
which makes the phone friendlier for users who
don’t want to geek out to every feature on the
phone.
If you’re a stylus fan and love scribbling notes,
the Note II is your dream phone.
I enjoyed my time with it and could see using the
Note II, as it has all of the features I’m interested
in and a bigger screen than my iPhone. It doesn’t
disappear into my jeans pocket, but it doesn’t stick
out either.

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 35

online

by glenn smith

We’re in
cyberwar

S

eething in the wake of a cyberattack that put millions
of South Carolinians at risk, Gov. Nikki Haley told
the world she wanted to slam the responsible hacker
against a wall and brutalize him.
But just how likely is it that the governor or anyone else
will ever get their hands on the culprit who violated the state
Department of Revenue’s computers?
By their very nature, hackers are a shadowy and elusive
lot who go to great lengths to mask their mischief, hide their
identities and cover their trails across cyberspace.
Their ranks include lone wolves out for a challenge, “hacktivists” out to prove a point or expose vulnerability, criminal
gangs seeking to plunder from the unsuspecting and cyberagents trying to glean secrets from competing nation-states.
They are sprinkled all over the globe, and they can be very
hard to catch – though not impossible.
36 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

In February, Interpol announced the arrest of 25 suspected
members of the loose-knit Anonymous hacker group in a
sweep across Europe and South America. The FBI rounded
up several more suspected LulzSec and Anonymous hackers in March with the aid of a legendary computer vandal
turned informant. And in June, an international investigation led to the arrest of 24 hackers around the world who had
used stolen credit card, bank and personal information to
victimize hundreds of thousands of people.
Doug Benefield, director of research and development
for Barling Bay, a SPAWAR security contractor with corporate offices on Remount Road, said the hacking threat is
omnipresent.
“Everybody’s getting hacked,” he said. “We’re in cyberwar
and it’s been going on for a while.”
“It’s really just the last five years that it’s kind of gone off
the charts with volume,” he said. Benefield, who works with
the federal government’s classified systems, said one major
U.S. military command gets attacked some 10,000 times a
day. “The volume is just absurd.”
Big profits
Driving many hackers and their criminal associates are the
huge potential profits that can be made from stolen data on
the black market.
To get an idea of the scope of the problem, an estimated 8.6
million U.S. households had at least one person 12 or older
who experienced identity theft in 2010, with losses totaling
$13.3 billion, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
A recent report by Javelin Strategy and Research determined
the victim count rose to 11.6 million last year.
Thieves buy and sell stolen personal information in murky
online chat rooms, card-sharing websites and hacker forums.
They also treat it like a commodity overseas, experts said.
“Bad guys find this attractive because it’s an easy crime
to commit and its hard to hunt down these people in other
countries,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder

of the Ponemon Institute, a Michigan-based think tank
dedicated to privacy and data-protection practices. “And
the bad guys are very persistent because there is gold in this
information.”
How it works
Ponemon said the price for individual pieces of information
can range from a few pennies to several dollars, depending
on its value. When you sell in bulk, that adds up.
Stolen credit card numbers are often sold online in large
batches known as “dumps” that buyers bid on with a guarantee that a certain percentage will be good to use, Kenney
said. The sellers are urged to use the numbers quickly, before
the card holders or their credit card companies discover the
theft and cancel the number, he said.
Health records or detailed tax files cost more and are
more of a long-term threat because they contain a whole
host of information that can be used to raid a bank account
or steal an identity, Ponemon said. Even if someone knows
their Social Security number has been compromised, it’s
very difficult to get that number charged, leaving them
vulnerable to theft.
How bad is it?
State officials have said they are still trying to determine the
extent of the breach in South Carolina and what was stolen.
One Midlands lawmaker issued a release stating that entire
tax returns were accessed by the hackers, but the governor’s
office has not confirmed that statement. What is known is
that hackers raided a Department of Revenue database with
3.6 million Social Security numbers, 387,000 credit or debit
card numbers and information for as many as 657,000 companies in a breach that began Aug. 27.
Beth Givens, director of the San Diego-based Privacy
Rights Clearinghouse, said the theft is the largest breach of a
state agency on record that her organization is aware of.
Gov. Nikki Haley has said the attack originated from a
foreign IP address, but won’t say exactly where.
Several security experts said the attack sounds like the
work of sophisticated cyber-thieves who operate out of Russia and other former Soviet bloc countries. Russian hackers
have long been known for their clever and devious skills,
including a 2000 breach in which cyber-thieves infiltrated
Microsoft’s computer system and sent passwords for its
closely guarded source code to an e-mail account in St.
Petersburg, Russia.
Other countries also have a strong presence. In China, for
example, police uncovered a hacker training operation two
years ago that recruited thousands of members online and
then provided them with lessons and tools.
Hackers employ a variety of strategies to get in from afar.
Some send emails trying to trick folks into clicking on
infected attachments that download harmful software,
allowing the attacker entry or control over the computer.
People’s natural curiosity often gets the better of them, at
the expense of their employer, said Frank Abagnale, an infamous former con man who now runs a security firm and is
an FBI consultant.

To emphasize his point, Abagnale said, he often scatters USB flash drives labeled with the word “Confidential”
around the parking lot of a business before he gives a
presentation. During the presentation, he then logs on and
points out how many employees have found and inserted the
drive into their work computers with no idea where it came
from or what’s inside it. He always finds some workers who
have done this, even though their company policies may
strictly forbid it.
“That’s how these breaches occur,” Abagnale said. “The
hackers are just waiting for someone to open that door for
them.”
Other hackers employ something known as an “SQL
injection” attack which uses malicious code to probe and
exploit vulnerabilities in websites and access poorly protected databases. A suspected member of the LulzSec
hacking group reportedly used this technique last year in
an extensive attack against the computer systems of Sony
Pictures Entertainment, according to the FBI.
Catching culprits
So how do you catch these folks?
Kenney, the Secret Service agent, said doing so requires a
lot of investigation and a fair amount of cooperation with
law enforcement and governments here and around the
world.
The Secret Service also has offices in Russia, Bulgaria,
Estonia and other countries where prolific hackers hide,
Kenney said. Information developed here is passed on to
offices there, and those agents then work with their foreign
counterparts to try to shut down the operation, he said.
The FBI has employed similar strategies, and has had
some success. In 2005, for example, specially trained
agents traveled to Morocco and Turkey after hackers there
unleashed a malicious code called “Zotob” that caused computer systems worldwide to sputter and crash.
Agents gathered IP addresses, e-mail addresses, names
linked to those addresses, hacker nicknames, and other
clues uncovered in the computer code. Working with Turkish and Moroccan law enforcement, they used the information to track down two of the suspected hackers within eight
days of code hitting the Internet, according to the FBI.
But experts caution that other hackers learn from such
episodes and make course corrections to keep from getting caught while prowling for ways to get into the world’s
computers.

Several security experts said
the attack sounds like the
work of sophisticated cyberthieves who operate out of
Russia and other former
Soviet bloc countries

science

by nancy trejos

How to beat jet lag

E

ven astronauts have a difficult time getting
over jet lag.
So much so that NASA has a fatiguemanagement team at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston trying to devise strategies to deal with it.
Astronauts are constantly traveling to space agencies in Germany, Japan and Russia for training.
And when they get there, “they have to hit the
ground running,” says Steven Lockley, a neuroscientist specializing in sleep medicine at Harvard
University who does consulting for the team. “They
can’t spend two weeks adapting. They need to do
training.”
If you’ve ever traveled across time zones, you’ve
probably felt the symptoms of jet lag: fatigue,
trouble sleeping, digestive problems, headaches
and irritability. Business travelers who have to drop
into cities for a short period of time and be productive say it’s a major problem.
“Jet lag is something I learned to manage for my
health, productivity and sanity,” says Stephanie

38 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

Hackney, who has traveled to 43 countries as a
travel blogger.
Research shows that jet lag affects how people
work. For three weeks, participants in a study at
Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital were
placed on 28-hour days with six hours of sleep to
mirror the effects of jet lag. Their work production
slowed down in that time.
Jet lag isn’t good for leisure travelers, either.
Who wants to spend their first day in Paris feeling
disoriented?
In a British Airways survey of passengers, 67%
said they didn’t know how to manage jet lag. The
airline has developed an online “Jet Lag Advisor”
with British sleep expert Chris Idzikowski. Plug in
some information about your sleep patterns, and
you’ll get a plan for combating the disorder.
Many other doctors and companies have tried to
come up with remedies for jet lag. And some hotels
are trying to do more than providing softer pillows
to help travelers deal with jet lag. The MGM Grand

Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, for instance, has introduced
42 “Stay Well” rooms with special lighting that is supposed
to improve the body’s internal clock and help regulate melatonin production.
But Lockley says there’s no one quick fix. How much a
person is affected by jet lag depends on several factors, such
as the number of hours you’re ahead or behind, the time of
day you leave, and the direction you travel.
The rule of thumb is it takes about a day for each time
zone you cross to adjust.
“If you’re going to Moscow and have to sleep nine hours
earlier, that’s hard to do, and it takes about a day to equilibrate,” says Smith Johnston, a flight surgeon and the chief
of the fatigue management team at NASA. “You’re there a
week, you get in sync and now you’re back.”
Lockley has helped NASA develop strategies for their
astronauts to fly all over the world and even beyond it.
While they are tailored to each individual astronaut, Lockley says there are some principles that the average traveler
can adapt to their bodies.
Your internal clock
First, Lockley says, any traveler should understand the science behind jet lag. Everyone has a circadian rhythm, or an
internal clock.
Some people have shorter internal clocks and some have longer ones. Those who have shorter ones tend to sleep and wake
up early. Those with longer ones stay up and wake up later.
When you travel westward, you have to delay your clock.
Say you live in New York. That means people in Los Angeles
are three hours delayed behind you. When you go east, you
have to advance your clock. When you’re just biting into
dinner in Boston, people in London are off to bed.
Three-quarters of people have longer, or delayed, clocks.
“That’s why most people find it easier to travel westward,”
Lockley says. “Their body clocks are already going in that
direction.”
How can you use that to your advantage?
Lockley says that trying to adjust your clock even before
you take that flight can make a huge difference.
“Think, what are those people doing in that time zone and
start doing what they’re doing,” he says.
If you’re going from New York to Los Angeles, you need to
delay your system, so go to bed later than normal for several
days before your trip. If you’re going to London, go to bed
earlier.
That’s not to say you have to get to bed by 7 p.m. in New
York rather than your usual midnight.
Shelby Harris, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine
Program at New York’s Montefiore Medical Center, says
adjusting your schedule by just 15 minutes each day in the
days leading up to your departure is sufficient. “Even an
hour or two can actually make a big difference,” she says.
Changing your mealtimes can help with jet lag-induced
indigestion, Lockley says.
Controlling your exposure to light is also crucial to fighting jet lag, as light is a trigger for your body to wake up.
“The way to think about timing is if you stay up late and

see light later, you’re delaying your bedtime and delaying
your clock,” Lockley says. “If we see light early, we wake up
early and we’re advancing.”
Lockley gives a New York-to-London 7 a.m. flight as an
example. You arrive at 7 p.m. London time. That’s 2 p.m. in
New York. You’re trying to advance to London time, so you
want to see light when you arrive. Stay awake for the next
four hours.
If you leave New York at 7 p.m., you arrive in London at
7 a.m., when it’s 2 a.m. in New York. You wouldn’t want to
wake up at 2 a.m. So Lockley advises getting as much sleep
as you can on the plane with the use of sunglasses or an eye
mask, then getting off the plane and keeping sunglasses on.
At 11 a.m. London time, when it’s 6 a.m. in New York, you’re
ready for light.
A typical traveler would try to expose him or herself to
light right away to adjust to the new time zone.
“Simplistic advice, which is to get on the new time zone as
quickly as you can, is only right half the time,” he says.
If you have trouble sleeping, the use of melatonin, a natural sleep-inducer, or a sleeping pill such as Ambien could
help, but experts say you should consult your doctor first.
Hackney, who averages about 150 days on the road each
year, would rather try a more natural approach. She eats
healthy snacks on the flight and limits the amount of alcohol
she drinks.
And she tries to sleep as much as she can on the plane
with the use of an eye wrap, blanket, travel pillow and noisecanceling headphones. “I would never travel without them,”
she says.

How much a person is affected
by jet lag depends on several
factors, such as the number of
hours you’re ahead or behind,
the time of day you leave, and
the direction you travel

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 39

music

by joe meyers

Julie Andrews directs
new musical in Chester

T

he power was only out for a few
hours in the part of Connecticut
where Julie Andrews was staying during Hurricane Sandy.
The Hollywood and Broadway superstar is at the Norma Terris Theatre in
Chester these days developing a new
show, The Great American Mousical, based on one of the many young
people’s books she has co-authored
with her daughter Emma Walton.
The hurricane reminded Andrews of
another musical in development that
she worked on in Connecticut 56 years
ago – a little show you might have
heard of called My Fair Lady.
“There was a big storm then, too ...
opening night. A real white-out that
kept people from coming from Manhattan. At one point the word came
down that we wouldn’t do the show,”
Andrews recalled during a recent
interview.
“Rex (Harrison) was very nervous
and then all of a sudden we heard that
it was going to happen. It was very
dramatic and became a very big night
for me,” the star added.
My Fair Lady went on at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven to a great
response and then moved into New
York City, where it became the biggest
hit of the 1950s and made the 20-yearold Andrews the toast of Broadway.
The star said her second big Broadway
show, Camelot in 1960, also had a turbulent try-out tour.
In addition to having to make major
cuts in a musical that was running four
hours long, the company had to cope
with a brand new venue in Toronto.
“We were not only opening our
show, but they were opening the
O’Keefe Center. They were still hammering down carpets while we tried to

From my point of view, I think everything
is cyclical. We go through phases. It has
become massively expensive, of course,
but the talent is tremendous

40 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

Dan Jackman/WENN.com

rehearse,” she said, with a chuckle.
Although many big hits came out of
the old pressure cooker atmosphere of
doing public out-of-town try-out runs
just a few weeks before a new show
opened on Broadway, Andrews thinks
there is a lot to be said for today’s slower
method of private workshops and then
developmental productions, such as the
one she has been guiding in Chester.
The Great American Mousical began
about six years ago when Michael Price
at Goodspeed Musicals suggested to
Andrews that there was a show in the
book she wrote with her daughter. The
actress-director formed a tight bond
with Goodspeed after she staged The
Boyfriend there in 2005 and the results
were so successful that the production
went on a national tour.
The really serious work on Mousical began about two years ago when
Andrews assembled her team of collaborators, which includes book writer
Hunter Bell, the composer-lyricist duo
of Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler
and choreographer Christopher Gattelli, who won the Tony last spring for
his sensational work on Newsies.
“It’s great to work here,” Andrews
said of Goodspeed Musicals’ Norma
Terris Theatre, which is devoted to
the creation of new material. “They
take good care of us and make sure we
are all comfortable in this wonderful
sandbox.
“It’s nice not to have to tour
around with a new show,” she added.
“Although we still might do that
actually.”
The timing of Andrews’ musical love
letter to the Golden Age of Broadway
seems perfect for a period when funny
book musicals have reasserted their
appeal to audiences – the past decade
has seen the operatic shows of the
1980s and 1990s, such as Les Mis and
Miss Saigon, replaced by such funny
fare as Avenue Q and The Book of
Mormon.
“From my point of view, I think
everything is cyclical,” Andrews said of
the way that Broadway evolves over the
years. “We go through phases. It has
become massively expensive, of course,
but the talent is tremendous.
“For a while we had mostly dark
themes – and there is nothing wrong

with that – but it’s nice to see shows
full of joy again,” she said.
With so many years of experience in
musical theater, Andrews believes her
new show is in good shape and ready

for the next stage of its development.
“The music is charming, the book is
witty and it looks great – it has a real
glow to it. I think it’s good and that I
would know if it wasn’t.”

Dame Julie Andrews reads from
her 2006 book The Great American
Mousical at the Martin Luther
King Library Washington D.C.,
USA /Carrie Devorah / WENN

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 41

bookcase

by michael morrissey

New from Salman Rushdie
JOSEPH ANTON
By Salman Rushdie
Jonathan Cape, $39.99
In a recent installment of his excellently variegated
book blog, Jack
Ross compared
me with Salman
Rushdie. The
parallel was in
the difficulty of
Rushdie writing
his “whale” of a
book about life under the lethal threat
of a fatwa and my difficulty in writing
Taming the Tiger, a memoir of manic
depression. (And, by the way, I met the
amiable Rushdie in New York a few
years before the fatwa was uttered in
1989.) While the downside of mania
– panic attacks, paranoias and depression was no picnic, curiously enough,
writing the book was relatively easy. I
simply let memory do the job. I suspect
it’s been the same for Rushdie – the
writing must have been easier than
living the life of a fugitive for over a
decade under a death threat from Muslim fanatics. While the threat seems to
have quietened down from fever pitch
to rhetoric, I personally would not be
surprised if some future attempt is
made on the now much more visible
and accessible Rushdie.
The occasion for Muslim rage was
the publication of Rushdie’s fourth
novel, The Satanic Verses. It is difficult
for a non Muslim to empathise with
the wrath subsequently unleashed,
and in Rushdie’s view (more outrage?)
the Satanically sourced verses being
mouthed by female spirits rather than
male might have made them suspect.
The Islamic view was the book was not
really a novel but a thinly disguised
attack on Muhammad and Islam.
Needless to say, this is not Rushdie’s
view. My own typically liberal view is

that if a book gives offence, this does
not justify murdering the author.
Rushdie is, after all, a leading novelist
and Midnight’s Children, his second
novel, was acclaimed the best of all
the Booker award winning novels.
His work deserves respect even if you
disagree with what you imagine to be
its ideological subtext.
As it turned out, Ayatollah Khomeini
who invoked the murderous fatwa,
had not read the book nor had many
of the fanatics calling for Rushdie’s
blood. Though no serious attempt was
made on Rushdie’s life – thanks to the
high level of security protecting him
– the Japanese translator of the book
was killed and two translators seriously injured, many bookshops were
firebombed. The reward for the assassination of Rushdie continued to rise
and is still extant. The fatwa could not
be lifted because the man who made
it was dead. Thus did Rushdie spend
more than a decade being hidden away.
Many famous writers lent their dwellings, though obviously to maintain
security the target had to keep being
moved. Did this life of imprisonment
(however comfortable) and terror affect
the writer? You bet. Rushdie suffered
writer’s block (as it is called) but nonetheless managed to write several books,
columns and articles. But leading
publishers kept nervously dragging the
chain over publishing the paperback
version.
Two astonishing things – that Rushdie actually survived and continues
to do so; and that the governments of
England even the United States stood
behind Rushdie. History reverberates with reverse attitudes. The drama
of Rushdie’s inner exile is unparalleled in literary history. That a writer
should become such an international
cause celebre is almost as incredible
as the destruction of the World Trade
center towers. In a way, this was a fight

42 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

between democracy and fanatical
Islam and democracy stood firm. It is
important to note that many intellectual Muslims disagreed with the fatwa
and supported Rushdie.
The majority of writers on both sides
of the Atlantic from Harold Pinter to
Margaret Drabble, from Susan Sontag
to Bill Buford were on Rushdie’s side
with John le Carre being the most
vociferously opposed. Germaine Greer,
George Steiner, John Berger and Joseph
Brodsky also weighed in with negative attitudes but they were a minority. Rushdie made new friends both
among writers, police and politicians
so in a sense he was enriched by the
experience. He was impudent enough
to criticise Tony Blair for not having
a sense of humour. Nor was his case
strengthened by calling one of his
Muslim adversaries a garden gnome.
Rushdie’s writing is clear and not
his usual somewhat over-ornamented
style and he admits various infidelities while revealing a touching love
for his children. He doesn’t spare his
second wife Marianne and at least,
on Rushdie’s account, her behaviour
seems less than ideal. She accused the
non-smoking Rushdie of torturing her
with cigarettes.
Joseph Anton – Rushdie’s literary
fake identity – is a sombre and almost
exhausting book but well worth the
read for a detailed account of a unique
case of artistic adversity.

LOCKDOWN
By Drauzio Varella
Simon & Shuster, $37.00
The aim of all prisons is roughly the
same – to lock criminals up for a
certain period or indefinitely in order
to punish them for their crimes and
simultaneously prevent them from
harming society. However, some prisons, notably Scandinavian and New
Zealand prisons give their inmates

adequate food,
lighting, ventilation and toilet
facilities eliciting
indignation in
some quarters
that the prisoners
are being cossetted. The counter
argument is that
such prisons can
work towards rehabilitating prisoners
enabling them to lead law abiding lives
when they are released.
Such lofty aims are not on the agenda
of Carandiru, the largest and most
notorious prison in Latin America,
situated in Sao Paulo, its largest city.
At maximum capacity, it houses 9000
prisoners, three times what it was
designed to hold when it was first built
in the 1950s. The prison is made up of a
number of pavilions of varying degree
of squalor, over crowding, and degradation. Worst of all is solitary confinement, which is served in darkness.
Imagine spending months at a time in
such a condition! In many ways, this
prison reminded me of Dante’s Hell
with rapists and grasses (informers)
being at the bottom. Machismo justice
is administered inside by prisoners and
rapists may well be stabbed to death by
up to 30 men. They have just one knife
which is handed around.
Conditions border on the bizarre.
For instance, breakfast is served at five
o’clock, lunch at 9am and dinner at
2pm. The food is described as inedible
so men find ways to obtain alternative
food, some provided by visitors. Hunger
then is, so to speak, part of the punishment. As in all prisons, there is a thriving black market with cigarettes being
the main currency. Under the medieval
conditions all manner of diseases thrive,
the two most prominent and deadly
being TB and AIDS. In prisons, the
cause of the spread of AIDs is sharing
dirty needles. In Carandiru, cocaine
was the injected drug of choice until
“rock” or what we call P, came along.
Varella says it is the most addictive drug
– save for nicotine – and the high that
it gives is shorter every time you use it.
In a curious way, this diminishing high
reinforces addiction.
The minority group of transvestites –

surprisingly well treated by the aggressively masculine prisoners – have a
78 per cent rate of AIDS. Dr Varella,
who is in my view, a secular saint, does
the best he can. Sometimes prisoners
have multiple diseases, sometimes they
fake one to obtain morphine. Though
the doctor has of course great respect,
things can go wrong at any time. In
pavilion Nine, it is so overcrowded
that prisoners sleep toe to head, and in
some cases must stand to allow those
prone to get some sleep. As is well
known sleep deprivation is bad for the
nerves and can only serve to exacerbate men who already have a record of
violence.
Perhaps the most enlightened aspect
of this hell hole is the allowance of
intimacy visits by women. Every
weekend thousands of women – sisters,
daughters, mothers, girlfriends, wives
turn up with food parcels and, where
appropriate, intimacy is allowed. This
provides a certain safety valve for an
institution that is a powder keg ready
to explode at any time. Finally, when

it did in 1992, the authorities called in
heavy reinforcements and hundreds of
prisoners were shot without mercy or
negotiation.
The concluding chapters of the
harrowing but humane account are
devoted to cameo sketches of individual prisoners. There seems no doubt
everyone is guilty of felony but in some
cases it’s a clear case of self defence or
in machismo-driven Latin America, a
matter of male honour. To prevent too
much internal murder, doomed prisoners are shoved in the Dungeon for their
own safety. Varella’s is objective and
non judgmental. Curiously, in some
cases, you find yourself respecting
and even liking these crims. Whatever
crimes they have committed. Varella
notes, there is nothing like a mother’s
love. One mother who visits her son,
guilty of several brutal murders, says
she remembers him as a sweet smiling happy boy. Perhaps, so I would to
think, there is an aspect of Christlike
love in such an attitude, where the
seemingly unforgivable is forgiven.

Ganymede: A Tale of Middle Eastern Intrigue
Terrence Douglas
iUniverse, $20
An international terrorist plot unfolds as three competing
forces collide. Readers are immersed in a deeply powerful
plot that invites them to view the action from three different perspectives, influenced by the loyalties, commitment, and resources of each. This debut novel of intrigue,
international terrorism, and covert missions, by author
Terrence Douglas, depicts strong characters that introduce
Ganymede.
“The murder of German agents working with CIA
exposes a terrorist plot aimed at American soil in the
Douglas’ debut novel . . .The omniscient narrative, which give
readers more insight than characters, works best . . . An exemplary story that
takes readers on a stroll around the world, made all the better by taut dialogue
and expressive characters.” Kirkus Reviews.
This story tracks the dangerous and equally challenging adventures of protagonists who lead the action: Colin – the CIA operative assigned to Germany who
rushes off to make a covert meeting in Athens with his agent Hans--codename
Ganymede; Colin’s Spanish agent Jamie – codename Icarus – a bona-fide terrorist who seeks asylum in the U.S. in return for his cooperation; Ben Yousef, a
senior Libyan terrorist sponsor, masquerading as an oil expert; and Frost, a CIA
officer, assigned to Athens, who is haunted by his failed ambitions.
What makes readers so absorbed in these pages is the dramatic portrayal how
each of the characters respond to the challenges faced, leaving the reader to
speculate on how they will react to the next event unfolding.

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 43

movies

by steve woodhouse & shea conner

The name is…

T

he latest entry in the 50-yearold James Bond franchise,
Skyfall is about to hit theaters.
Fans are in for a treat as Bond reminds
us that just because there are a lot of
new action heroes out there, the classics will never die.
Skyfall is the third picture with
Daniel Craig playing the superspy.
Craig continues to bring a rugged face
to Bond, and with it, humanity. This
plays well into the underlying theme
of the movie, which is that things age
whether we like them to or not.
Following an exciting opening chase/
fight scene, Bond disappears. He reappears only when a hacker attacks MI-6.
The attack on the headquarters
really brings the age issue into the
forefront, as Bond’s longtime boss,
M (Judi Dench) is blamed for being
unprepared for the incident. She is told
she will retire within a specified time
frame and will be replaced by a former

soldier, played by Ralph Fiennes.
We soon learn that the attacker is
trying to seek revenge on M. A disgruntled former employee, Silva (Javier
Bardem) is revealed as the man behind
the plot. Bardem makes a great Bond
villain. As creepy-looking as he can be,
it seems as though it was only a matter
of time before he played such a role.
His villainy does not quite reach the
level of some of those in Bond’s past,
but it wasn’t supposed to be.
At the risk of letting out a spoiler,
Bond is essentially at odds with himself. The real conflicts he is having are
with technology and time. Silva’s past
is remarkably similar to Bond’s. When
coupled with M’s apparent preference
for Bond, and his protection, the antagonism between Bond and Silva plays
out more like a sibling rivalry. Just with
a lot of shooting, fighting and awesome
explosions.
Director Sam Mendes brings stun-

ning visuals to the screen throughout
the film. He brilliantly uses them to to
illustrate that while new is good, one
should never stop appreciating the old.
Whether it is the bright lights and
modern beauty of today’s Shanghai,
or the rolling hills of Scotland, there
is beauty everywhere to appreciate.
Just as stunning is Berenice Marlohe,
this edition’s Bond girl. Bond girls
usually don’t have much of a role, and
this is no exception, but when she’s
on screen, it’s hard to notice anything
else. For the ladies, I’m sure the same
can be said for Craig’s facial close-ups
and shirtless scenes, of which there are
plenty.
Dench plays a more pivotal role than
in films past. Obviously, she’s Judi
Dench, so she’s going to deliver.
In the end, Mendes’ world for Bond
is an exceptional mix of old and new
that should have you and the rest of
your audience impressed. The humor,
the action, the hidden gems that pay
homage to the character’s legacy make
for a wonderful moviegoing experience. Go see this film in the theater as
soon as you can.
SKYFALL
Cast: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench,
Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Running time: 143 minutes
Rating: M
GGGG

Director Sam Mendes brings stunning
visuals to the screen throughout the film.
He brilliantly uses them to to illustrate that
while new is good, one should never stop
appreciating the old
44 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

S

omewhere between the Indiana
Jones movies, Jurassic Park and
Minority Report, Steven Spielberg
became known as a master of spectacle
– a director who could shape stories
around imaginative, detailed worlds.
What many people forget, however,
is that Spielberg also does quite well
with historical dramas and personalities. If you need a refresher, check out
the incredibly powerful Schindler’s List,
the captivating Saving Private Ryan or
the underrated Munich. Spielberg has
proven time and time again that he can
bring history to life and direct a cast to
a tremendous performance.
With Lincoln, he’s done it again.
Though historians may gripe, every
choice that Spielberg and Daniel DayLewis make about the character of
Abraham Lincoln lends dignity and
honor to the most-praised president in
our nation’s history. From Hollywood
veterans like Sally Field, James Spader
and Tommy Lee Jones to TV supporting
men like David Costabile, John Hawkes
and Lee Pace, no performance leaves
anything to be desired. While Lincoln
may not offer many visual thrills or
gruesome battle scenes, it’s most certainly the best-acted film of 2012.
Anyone who enjoyed The King’s
Speech two years ago should buy their
tickets to Lincoln now.
Lincoln also succeeds because Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner
don’t try to do too much with one film.
Rather than making a true biopic that
encompasses Lincoln’s entire life, the
two chose to focus on his final months.
Most of the film unfolds in January
1865, shortly after Lincoln’s re-election,
when it’s all but certain that the North
will win the Civil War. The real battle
for him now is the fight against slavery.
Three commissioners from the Confederacy head up to Washington, and
Lincoln feels confident that he’ll have
their surrender within a week. But he
is driven to pass the 13th Amendment,
which would outlaw slavery (Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation was
merely an executive order he declared
two years earlier, but it was not a law
passed by Congress) before he’ll accept
their surrender.
The Democrats hate the amendment
and even Lincoln’s liberal Republican

Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of Lincoln is
one of a working-class hero, a master of
persuasion and one of America’s greatest
orators. It’s some of the decorated actor’s
best work to date
comrades – men like Preston Blair
(played by the great Hal Holbrook) –
want him to delay the vote. Only Lincoln seems to realize the stakes: That
once the Civil War is over, the amendment will be blocked by the Southern
states. Winning the war could prove
to be a Pyrrhic victory, but if he passes
the amendment before accepting the
surrender of the Confederacy, he can
truly alter the course of history.
Lincoln weaves together a great deal
of sassy and sophisticated speechmaking on the floor of the Senate, as
brazen insults give way to complex
debates of morality. As the congressional fight rages on, Lincoln brilliantly
maneuvers around it. He plays beggar.
He plays seducer. He plays tyrant. He
bribes Democratic senators who support slavery with patronage jobs. He
courts but also softens the influence
of curmudgeony Thaddeus Stevens
(Tommy Lee Jones at his finest), the
abolitionist who’s so staunchly for the
end of slavery that he might alienate
any undecided senator.
Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of
Lincoln is one of a working-class hero,

a master of persuasion and one of
America’s greatest orators. It’s some
of the decorated actor’s best work to
date. Spielberg frames his performance
with very little. We often see Lincoln in
the drab meeting rooms of the White
House or in his bedroom with the
tortured, legitimately crazy Mary Todd
Lincoln (Field), who still blames Abe
for the death of their third son. Spielberg keeps the backdrops simple and
lets the courageous cast do its thing.
By the film’s end, you don’t feel as
if you know more about the life of
Lincoln or even the man’s own psyche.
That’s no surprise. Few in his own time
claimed to know him well. However,
you do get the feeling that you know
what it was like to be in his presence.
And, man, that feeling is priceless.
LINCOLN
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis,
Sally Field, David Strathairn,
Tommy Lee Jones
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Running time: 149 minutes
Rating: PG-13
GGGG

Dec 2012/Jan 2013 | INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM 45

Amy Brooke

Lording it over others
The title brought me up short: Power and Greed, A Short History of the World, by Philippe
Gigantès. Where human society has gone wrong from the beginning of recorded history
can certainly be subsumed into these two categories, power and greed.
Found everywhere – among individuals, tribes, societies, private corporations, academic institutions, governments – their ministries, bureaucracies
and hierarchies – these two predominant drivers of destructive behaviour
in human affairs, by no means – au
contraire – automatically exclude
Prime Ministers and Members of Parliament. Yet their consequences cause
enormous damage to us all.
The corruption of power, long
recognised as destroying individuals’
judgment, ethics, and sense of moral
responsibility towards others goes
hand-in-hand with ambition – underpinned by greed.
Is this what has happened to this
country, where a political oligarchy
dominated by self-willed party leaders has replaced even a representative
democracy? Moreover, in our now
fragmented society, this politburo only
too comfortably accommodates a now
scandalous exhibition of self-entitlement – the sheer greed of corporate

executives expecting multi-milliondollar salaries as of right, even when
overseeing failing companies, exiting
with golden handshakes unheard of in
previous generations. All power to Ian
Taylor, CEO of Animation Research
in Dunedin, publicly saying enough is
enough and remaining on his present
salary for 10 years, having made a personal commitment to claim no more
until satisfied that every one of his staff
is paid what they are worth.
What of our major banks laying
off staff while their profits soar (a net
profit of $914 million for a recent three
months alone), being less than truthful
in the process? In our present climate
of greed, the philosophy of – Take what
you can get – advice I found essentially
shocking when imparted by the late
Roger Kerr, then Executive Director of
the New Zealand Business Roundtable,
devoid as it is of any sense of conscience and fair play – the banks are
doing just that.
Well aware of the destructive legacy

of the far Left throughout the 20th
century and basically supportive of free
market philosophy, an important lesson
I learned was that corporate capture,
including the wining and dining of
Prime Ministers and Ministers to influence government policy, is far from the
reality of a genuinely free market. It was
the Business Roundtable, its membership deliberately restricted to wealthy
organisations only by the setting of
high fees, which pushed so hard for
the dismantling of practices serving
workers in manufacturing and industry.
The savings in expenditure by wealthy
corporations has had its inevitable
consequence in the eventual deaths of
Pike River miners because of dereliction on the part of employers – as well
as successive governments. The “light
handed regulation” so regularly invoked
by the NZBR’s executive director is far
from sufficient in a society abandoning Christian values. We’ve reaped the
whirlwind in social and economic costs.
In this respect it’s interesting that
Conrad Black, historian, publisher
and columnist, having served a prison
sentence for crimes which he quite
possibly did not commit, now states
that he has “lost faith in the non-existence of God…” – the most important
milestone on the road to his conversion
to Roman Catholicism. I have been
struck in recent years by prominent
right- wing leaders in various financial and government sectors in this

country boasting they are atheist. One
could say – Go figure – except that they
are paralleled by the Left’s ambitious
powerbrokers.
The palpable antagonism felt by
many long-term National Bank supporters to the ANZ takeover is interesting. Comparatively recently the
National Bank considerably increased
its charges for personal loans (Why,
with soaring profits…?) It also essentially laid off staff, in spite of its claim
that, “We’re changing the faces of
banking, not the faces in your bank.”
Sheer casuistry. In Nelson alone, just
prior to the takeover, long-term staff
were faced with now merely part-time
positions, or redundancy. Only two
full-time positions remained for tellers well-liked by customers. Yet the
National/ANZ Bank, far from being
cash-strapped, has seen its yearly profits rise to a massive $1.27 billion.
Given the new mantra of “meeting
targets” – targets set by greed, not need
– there is genuine hardship now abroad
among New Zealanders deserving far
better. In a depressed economy, with
manufacturing closures widespread,
the days when a breadwinner could
provide for his wife and family on one
wage even further away, part-time
work offered to National Bank tellers
does not pay for full-time mortgages.
It is not as if the bank is cash-strapped,
unable to act with conscience towards
long-time loyal staff.
Power and greed…The growing
outreach of authoritarian impositions
on individuals is also at work in this
same bank’s insistence that all customers must now remove their hats.
Not simply an issue of beanies worn
by doubtful looking customers, it is
required from everyone, “to be fair”. I
have no problem with standing up to
silly requests, simply refusing to do so,
with staff privately supportive. And
here we have the exercise of power.
Tellers were told that they would
receive a first warning if they did not
request customers to remove their hats.
In my world, this is bullying.
These are the same counter staff for
some time now required (while trying
to count money accurately and indulge
in complicated financial transactions)
to simultaneously watch the bank’s

inner doors and open them only to
reputable-looking customers. This
National (now officially an ANZ) Bank,
requires customers to remain waiting
until allowed to enter. The unfairness
of this nerve-racking burden being
placed upon all tellers simultaneously
is quite extraordinary, without even
a respite allowed by each taking a day
in turn to rotate the constant doorwatching. Moreover, the sheer silliness
of thinking that a holding pen requirement for customers will prevent the
bank being robbed is almost incredible.
With the bank’s doors freely opening
for exiting customers, all any potential
robber has to do is to enter when this
happens. Customer safety is also compromised when individuals required
to wait before entering can be held
hostage in the closed foyer.
Having informed the former local
manager I had no intention whatever
of removing a hat I might wear (longterm customers well known to staff
were not to be exempt as this would be
“discriminatory”), I asked with interest
whether Sikhs were to be required to
move their turbans. Apparently not, on
the grounds of religious sensitivity. But
surely this was a form of discrimination, I happily pointed out. Presumably
we may look forward to gang members

Defecting from
Darwinian naturalism
About a decade ago I would muse on what it might take for intelligent design to win the
day. Clearly, its intellectual and scientific project needed to move forward, and, happily,
that has been happening.
But I was also thinking in terms of a
watershed event, something that could
have the effect of a Berlin Wall coming
down, so that nothing thereafter was
the same. It struck me that an event
like this could involve some notable
atheists coming to reverse themselves
on the evidence for design in the
cosmos.
Shortly after these musings, Antony
Flew, who had been the most notable
intellectual atheist in the Englishspeaking world until Richard Dawkins
supplanted him, announced that he
had come to believe in God (a deistic
deity and not the full-blooded deity
of ethical monotheism) on account of
intelligent design arguments. I wondered whether this could be the start
of that Berlin Wall coming down, but
was quickly disabused as the New York
Times and other media outlets quickly
dismissed Flew’s conversion as a sign of
his dotage (he was in his eighties when
he deconverted from atheism). Flew,

though sound in mind despite what his
critics were saying (I spoke with him
on the phone in 2006), was quickly
marginalized and his deconversion
didn’t have nearly the impact that it
might have.
Still, I may have been on to something about defections of high profile
intellectuals from Darwinian naturalism and the effect that this might have
in creating conceptual space for intelligent design and ultimately winning
the day for it. In 2011 we saw University
of Chicago molecular biologist James
Shapiro deconstruct Darwinian evolution with an incisiveness and vigour
that even the ID community has found
hard to match, in his Evolution: A View
from the 21st Century.
Thomas Nagel, with his just published Mind & Cosmos, has now
become another such defector from
Darwinian naturalism. Appearing
from Oxford University Press and
subtitled Why the Materialist Neo-Dar-

Thomas Nagel is a very major intellectual
on the American scene and his no-holdsbarred deconstruction of Darwinian
naturalism is just the sort of critique,
coupled with others to be sure, that will, if
anything, unravel Darwin’s legacy
48 INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM | Dec 2012/Jan 2013

winian Conception of Nature is Almost
Certainly False, this slender volume
(it’s only 130 pages) represents the most
disconcerting defection (disconcerting
to Darwinists) from Darwinian naturalism to date. We’re still not talking
the Berlin Wall coming down, but it’s
not hard to see it as a realistic possibility, off in the distance, after reading
this book.
Because intelligent design is still
a minority position that is widely
marginalized by the media and mainstream science, it’s easy for defenders
of intelligent design to wax apocalyptic. Indeed, it’s a very natural impulse
to want to throw off the shackles of
an oppressive and powerful majority, especially when one views their
authority as unwarranted and unjust.
So I have to keep my own impulses in
check when I make comments about
the Berlin Wall coming down (by the
way, I had an uncle, aunt, and cousins
who lived in “West Berlin” at the time
as well as relatives in Poland, so my
interest in the Berlin Wall is not merely
hypothetical). But Thomas Nagel is a
very major intellectual on the American scene and his no-holds-barred
deconstruction of Darwinian naturalism is just the sort of critique, coupled
with others to be sure, that will, if
anything, unravel Darwin’s legacy.
Nagel is a philosopher at New York
University. Now in his 70s, he has been
a towering figure in the field, and his

essays were mandatory reading, certainly when I was a graduate student
in philosophy in the early 1990s. His
wildly popular essay “What Is It Like
to Be a Bat?” takes on reductionist
accounts of mind, and his books Mortal Questions (Cambridge, 1979) and
The View from Nowhere (Oxford, 1986)
seemed to be in many of my fellow
graduate students’ backpacks.
Reading Nagel’s latest, I had the
sense of watching Peter Finch in the
film Network (1976), where he rants
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to
take this anymore” (in that famous
monologue, Finch also says “I’m a
human being, my life has value” – a
remarkable point to make three years
after Roe v. Wade). Now Nagel in Mind
& Cosmos, unlike Finch in Network, is
measured and calm, but he is no less
adamant that the bullying by Darwinists needs to stop. Perhaps with
Richard Dawkins in mind, who has
remarked that dissenters from Darwin
are either ignorant, stupid, wicked,
insane, or brainwashed, Nagel writes,
“I realize that such doubts [about
Darwinian naturalism] will strike
many people as outrageous, but that is
because almost everyone in our secular
culture has been browbeaten into
regarding the reductive research program as sacrosanct, on the ground that
anything else would not be science.”
Nagel has nailed it here. The threat of
being branded unscientific in the name
of a patently ill-supported Darwinian
evolutionary story is the thing that
most keeps Darwinism alive (certainly
not the evidence for it). We saw a similar phenomenon in the old communist
Eastern bloc. Lots of people doubted
Marxism-Leninism. But to express
such doubt would get one branded as a
reactionary. And so people kept silent.
I recall David Berlinski, a well-known
Darwin skeptic, telling me about a
reading group at MIT among faculty
there who studied his work but did so
sub rosa lest they have to face the wrath
of Darwinists.
In Mind & Cosmos, Nagel serves
notice on Darwinists that their coercive tactics at ensuring conformity
have not worked with him and, if his
example inspires others, won’t work
with them either. What a wonderful

subtitle to his book: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of
Nature is Almost Certainly False. It’s a
dare. Go ahead, make my day, do your
worst to bring the wrath of Darwin’s
devoted disciples on me. Nagel regards
the emperor as without clothes and
says so:
“For a long time I have found the
materialist account of how we and our
fellow organisms came to exist hard to
believe, including the standard version
of how the evolutionary process works.
The more details we learn about the
chemical basis of life and the intricacy of
the genetic code, the more unbelievable
the standard historical account becomes.
This is just the opinion of a layman
who reads widely in the literature that
explains contemporary science to the
nonspecialist. Perhaps that literature
presents the situation with a simplicity
and confidence that does not reflect the
most sophisticated scientific thought
in these areas. But it seems to me that,
as it is usually presented, the current
orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the
product of governing assumptions that
are unsupported, and that it flies in the
face of common sense.”
Darwinists now have many websites
in which the experts gush about how
wonderful Darwinian evolution is and
the laymen (invariably less informed
than Nagel) gush back about how wonderfully clear the experts have made
evolutionary theory to them, dispelling all doubt and rendering the theory
obligatory for all clear thinking people,
so that only those wedded to a religious
fundamentalism could doubt it. And
here comes Nagel, telling the Darwinists that they’re all washed up. It’s a
remarkable thing to behold. Darwinism depends for its continued sway not
on overwhelming evidence, which it
lacks (I got so tired of Darwinists using
the phrase “overwhelming evidence”
that I finally bought the domain name
overwhelmingevidence.com), but on its
ability to overwhelm a gullible intelligentsia. Once enough doubt seeps
into that group, the theory will prove
unsustainable. Nagel’s skepticism may
thus play a signal role in Darwinism’s
eventual overthrow.
But let’s talk about the book itself.
Nagel is a philosopher, and a careful

Thomas Nagel

philosopher at that, and his book is a
philosophical analysis of Darwinian
naturalism and its crashing failure in
accounting not just for the origin and
subsequent development of life, but
also for human consciousness, cognition, and morality. At the back of all
Nagel’s arguments is a kind of “no free
lunch principle.” He never states it that
way, but it is the idea that a cause must
be sufficient to account for its effect,
and the mechanistic processes of physics, chemistry, and a Darwinian biology, as we know them, are simply not
up to the task of explaining life and all
that follows in its train (notably consciousness, cognition, and morality).
A leitmotif that appears throughout
the book is that our intelligence as well
as the intelligibility of the world to that
intelligence need to be taken seriously
and cannot be dismissed because a
Darwinian naturalism would dismiss
it as an accident of natural history. For
Nagel, this intelligence and intelligibility is the precondition for science, and
so its dismissal as a negligible feature
of nature is unwarranted. Precisely
because the world is an ordered place
(i.e., a cosmos) that is intelligible via our
intelligence, the conceptual categories
with which we understand it must make
room for intelligence without eliminating it entirely (as eliminative materialists do) or reducing it to processes that
are inherently unintelligent and lifeless
(as reductive materialists do).